ActionAid Media Release

ActionAid welcomes the historic judgment of the court, which has declared that the Israeli Government’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territory is unlawful.

The ICJ concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territory constitutes systematic discrimination, and that its legislation and measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem breach international conventions which prohibit apartheid.

Every single day, our colleagues, partners and the people we support across the occupied Palestinian territory experience the trauma of living under a brutal occupation that severely curtails their basic rights and freedoms – just because they are Palestinian – and results in effective military control over all aspects of their lives.

Today’s verdict affirms the fundamental right of Palestinians to self-determination and to live free from violence and discrimination, which has been denied them for far too long.

The court has concluded that the Israeli government must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, cease all settlement activity – which it judged to be in breach of international law – and make reparations to the Palestinians affected.

ActionAid Australia Executive Director Michelle Higelin said:

“ActionAid welcomes this historic ruling and its acknowledgement of almost sixty years of horrific injustice,” said Ms Higelin.

“The ICJ’s opinion upholds the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination, and freedom from colonial oppression and racial segregation.

“The Court’s findings are wide-reaching and outline obligations not only for Israel, but for all countries.

“The world’s governments must uphold this opinion, and we call on the Australian Government to lead by example in accepting its findings.

“The Court has found that countries party to the Geneva Conventions, including Australia, have an obligation to hold Israel to account for its breaches of international law.

“The Court has found countries have an obligation not to recognise Israel’s occupation as legal, nor “render aid or assistance”.

“Australia, and all countries, should end any and all cooperation with Israel that could be used to support its illegal presence in Palestine – especially the supply of arms.

“It is clear: Israel’s illegal occupation must urgently come to an end, and reparations should be paid.

“We call on Israel in this moment to respect international law. It must recognise and respect the rights of people in Palestine as a pathway to sustainable peace,” said Ms Higelin.

By Bert Hetebry

How quickly at times we judge people just because they may not look or act or be like us, (like me?).

Judgementalism: Having a judgmental attitude or behaviour, tending to form opinions too quickly, especially when disapproving of someone or something. (Cambridge English Dictionary).

Judgement: The ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. ((Oxford Dictionary).

Justice: The quality of being just, impartial or fair (Merriam-Webster).

A conversation with a friend this morning. He’s angry. It appears that all those feel-good Maori names, street signs, alternative names for towns and landmarks in New Zealand are being removed. The anger isn’t because that names are being changed back to their English names, but that they were ever given Maori names in the first place. Not much good trying to explain that they were there first, that just doesn’t cut it. Besides, all the Asians are coming in taking it over now. So should the names be changed to show the Asian immigration and the effect that is doing? No, he’s glad he’s here now.

But then we have this thing about being on this country or that country. In our case, Whadjuk country, and Perth is the Burrell, part of Whadjuk country. My friend bristles at that too.

Talking with others, we see so many things people object to or have issues with, that people do not believe what I know to be ‘truth’, whatever cultural hangups I may have. Seeing people of different races suddenly appear in the neighbourhood, Somalis, Muslims with those letterbox dresses, different languages being spoken. It can be so jarring, so uncomfortable.

I sometimes went to work during the football season wearing a beanie or scarf of my favourite football team, and a colleague would express his contempt for the team I supported, bloody losers! There is only one team to support. Right?

It seems we have this innate thing that measures all we see by the standards we would like to uphold or have others uphold even when we have difficulty living up to those standards. Or the football teams we support, even which football code is actually football!

(Just as an aside, the original definition of football was a game played with a ball on foot, as opposed to polo which is played on horseback, by that definition, even cricket can be considered football.)

And in political discourse these differences become points of crisis, somehow amplifying the ‘Not like me’ as being bad, or at least ‘not good’. It seems we have a wall built around us, an impenetrable wall that rejects things we judge to be bad, and by implication, that we epitomise what is ‘good’. If only the rest of the world was just like me. Life would be perfect.

Or would it?

Judgementalism. We see things through our lens, we want things to be just so, just as it is prescribed in whatever orthodoxy ‘I’ subscribe to.

Every now and again, seemingly less frequently that it used to be, I get a YouTube video of some angry person bewailing an anti-something or other rant. A recent one was the Prince of Iran joining Trump and British Nationalists to fight (in caps) ISLAMISTS.

It seems the Prince would like to sit on the Peacock throne like his daddy did.

I pointed out that I thought it was interesting, the Prince fighting the Islamists, that draconian bunch who now control Iran, having replaced his father’s draconian rule which gained autocratic power after the British and Americans removed the democratically elected Iranian government. It seemed nationalising the oil resources policy was not a good thing, so the National Front government had to go. Democracy is not good when the nation’s natural resources are claimed as national resources. But there was no return comment. And that is not unusual. I get the angry YouTube videos and even when I ask what my friend really thinks about it, there is no comment. There is no engagement, no giving of himself, as though that does not need thinking about, in other words, there is no judgement, no considered thought regarding the angry diatribes.

It is easier to hate when the diatribe is accepted as truth.

And that’s the thing in all those matters that we subject to judgementalism. Accept without question that for example, Russia has every right to take back Ukraine since it had been a part of the Russian Empire since Catherine the Great in 1793 and had finally gained independence after the fall of the USSR in 1991. It belongs to Russia, no matter what the Ukrainian people think! (I was tempted to mention Israel/Palestine here but … mmmm).

Or it is easier to hate Islam and Muslims because of the way Islam treats women. Or enforces draconian laws such as hanging people who ‘wage war against god’, whatever that means, or promote Sharia Law, forgetting that we live in a country which does not have a state religion, in fact this is a secular nation where freedom of religion is mandated by law. And the laws of the land take precedence over religious laws.

Or easy to look disparagingly at the turban wearing, bearded Sikh man as though he must be a terrorist or something else that cannot be good. I was stopped recently by such a man, Guru Singh, a man who asked me for advice a few years back, regarding the education of his daughter. He knew I had been a teacher and we talked about which school I would recommend for his high-achieving primary school-aged daughter and how to encourage her into her next phase of education which will lead to later opportunities. He stopped to thank me because his daughter has got into the desired school and was setting the world on fire as she is working hard and achieving great results. It turns out that this man, Guru, is a hardworking, doting husband and father, a man who values the family he has and the freedoms of living in Australia. Look past the turban which contains his long greying hair, look past the beard, listen through the accent and just honour the man who is worthy of respect. And definitely not the ‘terrorist’ as a leading hand had branded him when he first came to my workplace.

Or to go to a concert featuring music from the Middle East or Persia, listen to refugees who have made this country their homes because their lives were in danger in their countries of birth, Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Lebanese joining a group of classical musicians to present some of the most amazing sounds imaginable, and afterwards delight us with tea/coffee and finger foods from far off places.

The ‘judgement’ of difference, to look at those people as human beings, to talk with them, to understand the hardships, the dangers they have faced to be here, the sacrifices they have made, the incredible enhancements they make to our culture. To understand how privileged we are that we can enjoy the freedoms these people do not have in the lands they have had to leave.

So we have looked at judgementalism and judgement, now we need to consider justice.

The impartiality, the fairness that proper justice demands is more than a legal proposition, it is more than a punishment ordered by a judge in a court of law, it is also the reward or punishment we administer to ourselves and others through or judgement and judgementalism.

Punishment can be the fostering of division, of promoting discord, of a failure to accept the diversity which is inherent in our humanity. Punishment is the violence we see in racial discord, the ugliness of seeing protesters seeking fairness, seeking the best humanity can offer being called out as haters, called out as Antisemitic, disparaging people who are not like us, failing to acknowledge that the land we walk on is part of the indigenous world we invaded, failing to see those people as somewhat less than human.

The rewards are far, far better.

To be stopped by a person who asked my advice, to talk with him about his family, his wife and children, to revel in the achievements of his daughter brings me great joy.

To listen to strange, hauntingly beautiful music from people who have travelled halfway around the world to find a safe haven here and bring with them such beauty, such warmth, such friendship, to listen to their stories of pain and loss, and appreciation that we have given them a safe place to live, to bring up their families, to bring with them the bits of culture which so define them.

To spend time with Aboriginal friends to relate to the land we live in, see it through eyes which respect the land as the origin of who we are, that we are in fact part of this land, that every fibre of our being has come from the land and will return to it. (And yes, I do mean ‘we’, since everything we eat, or use has its origin in the earth.} That the land is ‘mother earth’, far more than just a resource to be monetised.

As we feel the discomfort which judgementalism brings, we need to think through the emotions and fears to reason, to consider, to empathise with those who are not like us. To consider judgement, to make decisions which are sensible, which consider the humanity we share with all those around us, those who are different (and aren’t we all different, isn’t that part of the wonder of who we are?).

And through judging fairly, impartially we can live a life which is somehow fuller, enhanced by the beauty and wonder those we feared can offer us.

But it all must start with ‘me’. That cannot be imposed by anyone else.

The nation’s dentists have slated as a wasted opportunity the Government’s failure to properly consider funding dental services for Australia’s most vulnerable populations.

The Government today (July 18) released its response to the Inquiry into Senate Select Committee into the Provision of and Access to Dental Services in Australia, held last year, which made 35 recommendations to the Government, including several from the Australian Dental Association (ADA).

Key to our recommendations was to implement a Seniors Dental Benefits Schedule along the lines of the existing scheme for children, which would include providing funded dental care for over 200,000 seniors in residential aged care.

“It would only cost the Government $15bn a decade compared with trying to include dental into Medicare for every Australian, at a cost of at least $77 bn a decade, it’s estimated.

“So it makes perfect sense for the Government to have adopted the more financially palatable roadmap we propose for seniors, and then roll it out to other vulnerable populations including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and those on low incomes as outlined in the ADA’s Australian Dental Health Plan, (link below),” said ADA President Dr Scott Davis.

“But instead of doing that, the Government has chosen to ignore our solution for tackling the oral health issue of millions of seniors, as well as those other populations.”

Council on the Ageing data shows 40% over 55s delayed dental treatment in the last 12 months due to cost, increasing to 44% for those on lower incomes, including pensioners and those in aged care.

In addition the Government has sidestepped the need to address the issue of diminishing access to general anaesthetic services for children and special needs patients unable to have care in a general dental clinic.

The Senate report recognised the need for the Child Dental Benefits Scheme to be extended for services under general anaesthetic which would have contributed to improving this issue, but clearly they don’t care about this sector of the community either.

Dr Davis added: “Doesn’t the government realize it’s a whole lot cheaper to fix people’s oral health in dental clinics and dental hospitals than have people suffering in pain and presenting at hospital emergency departments?

“Our plan is a defined and clear roadmap out of this disaster, and not taking it up is a wasted opportunity and short-termist by the Albanese administration.

“If the Government chooses to ignore the recommendations of the Parliamentary Senate Inquiry, what’s the point of the Inquiry? Has it all been a whitewash and a show pony?”

The ADHP can be found here: https://www.ada.org.au/about/dental-profession/australian-dental-health-plan

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) Media Release

To improve equity and access to higher education, the 20% student loan tax on FEE-HELP loans needs to be abolished, according to the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent higher education, skills training, and international education providers.

The 20% student loan tax (formally known as a ‘loan fee’) is levied by the Australian Government on FEE-HELP loans taken out by students studying with most independent higher education providers.

“This tax is effectively a tax on learning, unfairly burdening students who choose these institutions for their education,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive Officer.

The 20% student loan tax is highly discriminatory as it only applies to students studying with independent higher education providers.

“This creates an uneven playing field and penalises students for their choice of institution despite these providers often offering specialised and high-quality education tailored to industry needs,” Mr Williams said.

The Student Loan Tax The 20% student loan tax (formally known as a ‘loan fee’) is levied by the Australian Government on FEE-HELP loans taken out by students studying with most independent higher education providers. Tax is incompatible with the Australian Universities Accord Final Report recommendations, which advocate for high levels of participation and attainment in higher education. The Accord emphasises the need for inclusive and equitable access to education, recognising that our nation’s future prosperity relies on a well-educated and highly skilled workforce.

“The imposition of this student loan tax is inconsistent with the broader objectives of the Australian Universities Accord Final Report recommendations of increasing tertiary education participation through a more inclusive approach. Removing this tax will have positive benefits by making higher education more accessible to all Australians,” Mr Williams said.

Our country needs to increase the number of skilled workers and ensure they have access to lifelong learning opportunities. To achieve this, we must support higher participation among groups historically under-represented in higher education.

“These students require adequate financial support to succeed throughout their learning journeys, not to be whacked with a 20% student loan tax,” Mr Williams said.

ITECA Believes abolishing the 20% student loan tax is essential for fostering an inclusive, equitable, and robust higher education system.

“This week, ITECA wrote to every member of the federal parliament to raise the profile of how the student loan tax acts as a disincentive for thousands of students looking to undertake higher education,” Mr Williams said.

This is one of the many reforms required to put students at the heart of a high performing higher education system that recognises the significant contribution of independent higher education institutions.

By Dale Webster

It is impossible to pinpoint an exact time when Australia’s big four banks turned on their regional customer base but May 24, 2024 will be remembered as the day the party ended – and they have no one to blame but themselves.

After 15 months, 13 hearings and more than 600 submissions, a senate inquiry into regional bank closures handed down eight recommendations the banks should have seen coming but, due to uncontrollable arrogance, didn’t.

During the progress of the inquiry, they pushed the boundaries of ethical behaviour so far – from how they responded to a request for a moratorium on closures, to the marketing spin they gave as evidence at the hearings – that senators of all political persuasions were given no choice but to put aside fundamental ideology and move to bring an end to this abuse of power.

Until now these four corporations – ANZ, the Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac – have been untouchable.

They got hold of regional Australians’ money decades ago through trusted relationships with local managers and built their banks into multi-billion-dollar companies.

But instead of showing loyalty to their customer heartlands, they have taken that money and exited, restricting customers’ access to their own funds and discriminating against the very people who helped build their empires.

Due to lack of competition and the difficulties of changing banks, regional Australians have simply had to work around the problems created by this behaviour and hope like hell that if they kept telling their stories the government would eventually come to their aid.

There have been three attempts before now.

The banks began to cull branches in regional Australia in the 1990s. About a third of the network had been slashed by the time the first inquiry was called in 1999, with first-term MP and now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese among those who grappled with the situation.

One of the initiatives this committee came up with was a “branch closure protocol”, which in its original form should have at least been an effective tool to ensure banks still had to provide and pay for access to cash in communities they were leaving.

Unfortunately, in responding to the final report, the Liberal Government of the day added two words to the recommendation, “where viable”, disarming its power. Placed in the hands of the banks to self-manage, the protocol has become a highly problematic document much discussed during this latest inquiry.

Despite repeated calls in submissions for community service obligations to be imposed, the 1999 committee, led by David Hawker, bowed to intense pressure from the Australian Banking Association and, falling back on previously published views that “regulation for social purposes was inefficient”, made no recommendations on the subject.

A second inquiry specifically looking at regional branch closures was held not long after in 2004.

This time led by Senator Grant Chapman, the joint committee was swamped with submissions asking for the government to intervene but again, despite a thorough investigation of the issues, the recommendations in the final report pulled up short of enforcing community service obligations.

As a result, the Labor members issued their own ultimatum in a separate statement warning the banks that if they couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing by their customers, the ALP was prepared to re-regulate the banking industry.

It would be nearly two decades, during which time another 1000-odd regional banks would be lost, before another inquiry was held.

The announcement that a “Regional Banking Taskforce” was being formed in 2021 was initially welcomed but it soon became clear that the purpose of this exercise was more about media opportunities for Coalition senators coming up for re-election than addressing the banking crisis.

Even worse, the first-term senator behind the idea, Perin Davey, did something incomprehensible (and arguably negligent given what followed) by inviting all the major banks and their representative Anna Bligh from the Australian Banking Association to the table as part of the decision-making team.

The result was catastrophic.

Despite more than 500 submissions detailing the distress and turmoil being experienced by individuals and businesses due to the loss of their banks, the final report (just 20 pages) pushed the banks’ own agenda that regional branch closures were inevitable, with the recommendations giving them a government endorsement to proceed.

Almost 100 regional banks were lost in nearly as many days after the report was released.

Ms Bligh admitted later she had not read a single submission.

This most recent inquiry – undertaken by the Senate Standing Committees on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport – was called in response to the landslide of closures that followed the release of the taskforce report.

Thanks to Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick, who grasped the seriousness of the situation and moved the motion for the new inquiry on February 8, 2023, the bank executives would this time be in the witness stand where they belonged.

Given what was uncovered through dogged questioning by the senators involved – special mention to chairman Matt Canavan, Richard Colbeck, Senator Rennick, Malcolm Roberts and the late Linda White for their performances grilling the CEOs of the major banks – the recommendations to come from this inquiry were right and fitting, but that does not mean they did not come as a surprise.

The stripping of self-regulation, recognition of banking as an essential service, guaranteed access to cash and a pathway towards the re-establishment of a government bank are powerful political moves that even the most optimistic followers of this inquiry did not think the senators would have the courage to put forward.

The problem for the banks was that they left the committee with no choice.

The strength of the recommendations needed to match the strength of the evidence or the result would have been an unforgivable insult to the people who had put their faith in them.

So what did the banks finally do to find themselves in this situation after getting away with so much for so long?

These are some of the key issues that could not be overlooked this time:

• hurting the most vulnerable in society
• failure to do due diligence
• gaslighting
• transferring costs
• transferring risk
• general arrogance

Hurting the most vulnerable in society

A blind man humiliated by bank staff who made him try to use an ATM at an ANZ branch where teller service had been removed.

NAB telling its elderly customers they must drive more than 70km on one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Victoria to do their banking after closing Alexandra’s last bank.

Two-hour wait times to use Westpac’s Indigenous support line after the bank closed its Tennant Creek branch, only to find there are no interpreters or First Nations staff to speak to.

Of all the inquiries that have specifically looked at the issue of regional bank closures, the latest is the first to directly reference the welfare impacts in its terms of reference.

If life was not hard enough for the elderly, disabled, poor, illiterate, those who don’t speak English as a first language, Indigenous Australians living in remote areas and victims of domestic violence, branch closures have only added to their problems according to the senate inquiry’s final report.

These people are simply collateral damage to the banks.

There is no plan – when their local branch closes, banking is simply no longer accessible to any customer who cannot use digital or phone banking, ATMs or does not have the means to get to a branch outside their community.

These customers are forced into a situation where the only way they can manage their finances is with outside assistance, taking away their independence and exposing them to the risk of abuse.

There is no acceptable reason for the banks to have put customers in this position but under self-regulation this cruelty – the word has not been used lightly – has been allowed to perpetuate.

“There is a strong case to be made that the banks are actively discriminating against aged and disabled Australians,” Peter Sutton, a former banker who grew up in northern Victoria, wrote in his submission.

West Australian farmer Angela Sims told the Beverley hearing that her mother had begged her to attend to speak for the many elderly people who can’t use online banking, ATMs or the complicated, multi-level phone systems most banks are using now.

She said her mum had not been able to get money out of her account after her bank closed at Augusta because she didn’t know how to use an ATM.

“I am not there to help her, and she doesn’t feel that should be my role. She is a private person. It concerns me that there are people out there who are not accessing their banks. My mum has hip issues. She has to leave town to go to the bank. She recently had a fall. The closest town is Margaret River, so she really struggled. The bank says to ring, but she can’t deal with the automated messaging. They say, ‘Get on the Internet and do Internet banking.’ My mum wouldn’t know how to turn a computer on, let alone own one to navigate Internet banking. She is also suspicious of giving banking details over the phone because the elderly are bombarded with scams – ‘Don’t talk to anyone, don’t tell anyone anything.’ Even in a conversation with a trusted bank, they are frightened of giving out details in case they lose their hard-earned money.

“I have elderly in-laws. My mum is 85. My father-in-law is 90 and his wife is 85. Due to health conditions, one has lost their licence and one has a licence, but in a very limited capacity. They need to drive from York to Northam to access their bank. They can’t. Their attitude is, ‘I don’t understand. I have been banking with these people since I started work as a 16-year-old. I have had bank loans, I have had bank accounts, I have saved all my life, and in my hour of need the bank runs for the hills.’ Accessing banking is made so difficult that they end up not accessing their funds.

“I also have a family member who works in a bank in a small community. She often speaks of how terrible she feels when someone is away, because the bank shuts. There are no relief staff. They have part-time banking services. If someone is ill, the bank shuts for the day. So even if people know the bank is only open from 11 to one o’clock on a Tuesday, it is not there when they need it. They have no other people to help, they don’t have cars, they don’t have family members, they don’t have access to anyone to drive them to another location. They are financially stranded.”

Senator Canavan was clearly moved, acknowledging the power of her words.

The final report stated that the committee held the view that where a bank has closed a branch there has been a material breach in the customer contract.

This would relate to restriction of access – a pillar of the Banking Code of Practice, yet under self-regulation the people affected by the removal of face-to-face service have no recourse to independently dispute the closure in a way that could have any impact on the outcome.

Even if the Australian Securities and Investments Commission could be motivated to show interest in pursuing the banks over closure issues, the wording of the branch closure protocol gives it nothing to work with.

The worst the Banking Code Compliance Committee can do is write a cross report and human rights and discrimination complaints are settled privately with confidentiality agreements because people in the demographic most affected are hardly going to be able to negotiate or afford taking the matter to the Federal Court.

The banks can literally take their customers’ money and run and there is currently nothing the government can do about it.

Failure to do due diligence

Perhaps the most staggering fails of the big four banks to come to light during the inquiry is that they appear to have changed their business models to digital first and took away face-to-face access to banking without checking how many of their customers would not be able to use the technology.

The Digital Inclusion Index is a highly respected research database that has been run in collaboration by RMIT and Swinburne universities and Telstra since 2014, meaning anyone wanting to know how many Australians can and can’t access digital banking has had the information available at their fingertips for the past decade.

This research was quoted repeatedly in submissions, including those from state governments, to both the Regional Banking Taskforce and recent senate inquiry.

Exclusion from the digital world is at the heart of the welfare issues being caused by regional bank closures yet ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott told the senators at the September 2023 Canberra hearing that he was not familiar with the database.

He had just explained to the senators that according to research by the University of South Australia, “most older Australians like and accept the online banking environment and that Australians over 65 are responding in line with younger cohorts in adopting digital banking.”

The senators noted the contradiction between this research and what they had been told by other witnesses quoting the Digital Inclusion Index.

Had Mr Elliott done his due diligence before starting to strip away face-to-face service by closing branches and removing teller service, he would have discovered that the number of Australians excluded from digital banking is roughly seven million.

That is almost a third of the population of Australia who depend solely on cash and cheques.

It’s not just about having the ability to use technology – the index tracks other important factors such as connectivity and being able to afford the devices required to access digital technology and run them.

“Online banking services using mobile, fixed or satellite connectivity is only as good as location, internet services offered, capacity to pay and digital literacy, and is contingent on good power supply that is often problematic in East Gippsland,” the East Gippsland Shire said in its submission.

David Morcom, chief executive of neighbouring Wellington Shire, the third largest municipality in the state with more than 45,000 residents, brought the numbers with him to the Sale hearing.

“Two-thirds of our community don’t have access to broadband,” he told the senators.

“Thirty per cent of the population in Sale is over the age of 60 and eight per cent of Sale’s households don’t have a car. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index, which you may be familiar with, measures access, affordability and digital affordability. Wellington Shire’s index is typical of many regions at 65, as opposed to a Victorian average of 72, so there is a clear level of disadvantage that we experience in the regions.”

After being tackled by three senators in a row over his lack of awareness of the Digital Inclusion Index, Mr Elliott said he would “have a look at it”.

“I am sure there are always things we can learn,” he said.

The senators would later find out that the study quoted by Mr Elliott involved only 46 people being interviewed, none of them were from regional Australia and that ANZ had paid for the research.

The biggest lesson for Mr Elliott from this inquiry may well be that politicians do not appreciate being treated like idiots.

Gaslighting

The major banks and the Australian Banking Association have continually blamed customers for the closures of their local branches, quoting falling visitation and a rise in digital transactions to justify their decisions.

This has been consistently met with confusion by customers who say the branches were always busy.

It turns out they were probably right.

Whispers of profitable branches being closed due to policies to forcibly transition customers away from face-to-face service to distort data used to justify closures have been around for about a decade but it was the Financial Sector Union’s submission to the Regional Banking Taskforce that finally exposed the practice.

Bank whistleblowers told of being performance-managed to reduce over-the-counter interactions with customers, sign up customers for digital banking and use ATMs to get cash.

Of course, with considerably more banking representatives on the taskforce than MPs, it was not until the latest senate inquiry that the FSU was able to deliver the information to a receptive audience.

Queensland executive secretary Wendy Streets was the final witness at the first hearing at Sale.

“Today, you’ve heard from representatives of the banking industry that regional branch closures are solely driven by customer preference—that customers are voting with their feet and crying out for digital options to do their banking, instead of the traditional branch model of service,” she said.

“Get used to it. You will hear this repeated ad nauseam for the duration of this inquiry. You heard phrases such as ‘we want customers to be aware of all their banking options’ and heartwarming stories of the convenience of banking when you want. These are weasel words, in our view. The banks claim that the public prefer to complete their financial transactions online. However, it is disingenuous for the banks to single out their customers as the reason for these closures. It is the banks that have enforced this change. It has long been part of the business model of all of these banks. The banks have engineered the move to digital and herded their customers into these options.”

She went on to read statements from bank staff explaining how this was done.

Over the course of the inquiry and even Senate Estimates, bank executives were grilled over the manipulation of data, with NAB copping the brunt of the assault.

Their release of closure “fact sheets”, a result of a taskforce recommendation the banks had hoped would take the heat off them, left them exposed to closer scrutiny than they had ever had to deal with before.

Then a slip-up on one of the documents blew the lid off the scam: NAB was only counting transactions.

All the essential business that customers need face-to-face assistance with that didn’t result in a transaction (ie, everything that could not be done using Bank@Post) was not being recorded.

NAB was also caught omitting to mention that 63 of the branches it had closed in regional Australia since the start of 2021 because of “declining visitation” had their opening hours drastically cut at the end of 2020.

Customers giving evidence at the inquiry confirmed that many branches hadn’t even been opening during these reduced timeframes.

Add in the practice outlined by the president of Shire of Wyalkatchem, Quentin Davies, of banks moving big farming and business accounts to branches in larger centres and it became very clear that the banks have been playing a dangerous game with the truth when justifying closures.

While the gaslighting didn’t please the senators, it was what was hidden under the data-fudging that for them was unforgivable – that the branches that were being closed were profitable.

Until this inquiry this was always a grey area, with an inference when announcing a closure that because customers were not using a branch it was therefore not a viable site.

But from the moment a Westpac executive admitted under questioning at the first hearing that a decision to close a branch at Sale was not based on profitability but rather a desire to change operating model, the senators were on the scent of a scandal.

Closing a branch because it was losing money could be accepted; closing it at such a high human cost because of greed is a difficult thing for any reasonable person to rationalise, if not impossible.

Transferring costs

The big banks have two types of savings in their sights these days – monetary and emissions – and it is debatable which is worth more to them.

For the $1 million a year estimated to run a branch – a paltry sum compared to the billions in profits the banks make annually – it may well be that the electricity savings they are claiming against their net zero targets are the real prize as “clean and green” becomes its own currency.

But as the banks close in on net zero, customers have been telling the government inquiries about the extent to which they have had to take to the roads – and even the air in some cases – to chase banking services they could once access in their own community.

They are bearing the cost of fuel, wear and tear on their vehicles and time lost away from work and businesses.

They are also adding to their carbon footprint each time they travel out of their area to do their banking.

Until recently there was no way for anyone without inside knowledge of how many customers a bank branch had to correlate the amount of travel that would be generated by its closure.

However, thanks to activity data being included in the recently introduced “fact sheets”, that is no longer the case.

Numbers are broad but they do provide a window into the environmental impact of branch closures for the first time and confirm suspicions that closures are most likely generating more emissions than are being saved.

Using a basic carbon footprint calculator, an analysis of customer numbers at 31 regional branches closed by NAB leading up to and during the senate inquiry shows that, at the bare minimum, the emissions generated by the extra distance customers would need to travel to access banking services equates to 10 per cent of global Co2 savings claimed by the bank under the Federal Government’s Climate Active program in 2021-22.

What’s worse – and this was something the senators cottoned on to during the inquiry – the bank has been using branch closures to help meet its net zero targets.

NAB says in its 2021-22 Climate Active report the savings it made that year were achieved mainly through though reducing its electricity consumption which “can be attributed the consolidation of NAB’s property portfolio (commercial buildings and branch closures) and relocation of colleagues into new, energy efficient buildings”.

Former NAB chief executive Ross McEwan didn’t like being asked about this at the Canberra hearing in September 2023 and became agitated when Senator Rennick asked if branch closures were linked to executive bonuses.

Mr McEwan denied that they were, but NAB’s 2022 Climate Report states that climate change had been formally added in 2021 to NAB’s Risk Management Framework, which it says is used by the board to help determine executive “variable rewards”.

In a response to a question on notice from that hearing, NAB confirmed that branch closures helped the banks achieve a 10 per cent reduction in total energy usage across NAB’s branch network between the year ending 30 June 2021 and the year ending 30 June 2022.

By anyone’s standards this isn’t a good look.

Transferring risk

Access to money, or lack of it, sits at the core of human wellbeing and because of this, banks are often the places where things can turn nasty.

Robberies are top of mind when it comes to risk due to the amount of cash being held on premises and although they appear to happen less than they did in the 1980-90s due to better security acting as a deterrent, they are still a very real threat.

In Victoria for example, there have been six violent robbery/burglaries at a bank each year on average for the past 10 years according to the state’s Crime Statistics Agency.

Add in violent assaults, firearm and weapon offences, threatening behaviour, conduct endangering life, riot and affray and terrorism and the number of violent incidents bank staff have had to deal with each year since 2014 hits 75.

Looking at all crime – a large part of which is deception offences that bank staff receive specialised training to identify – every single bank in Victoria would have had to call the police twice a day, every day for the past decade.

Guns, knives, angry people, family violence, deceit, even arson – this is what the big four banks have handballed to post office owners.

And these people – usually just a person or couple running a small business on their own – must manage the risk of being the closest thing to a town’s only bank without the benefit of a building designed for banking, security screens, duress alarms, armed guards or a vault.

Many sleep in the same premises the money is being kept at.

When questioned at the senate inquiry about how much they pay Australia Post to be their representative in a community, the three major banks who do offer Bank@Post would not disclose the amounts, but it is widely understood to be between $10-$20 million per year each.

If Australia Post did share this with its licensees (it doesn’t) it would put the daily contribution to the 3500 post offices who act as their proxies at between $8 and $16 per day per post office.

Not a lot to mitigate the increased risk of having a sawn-off shotgun pointed at you.

General arrogance

Could one last display of arrogance have been what finally brought the banks unstuck?

On February 10, 2023, two days after the motion for an inquiry into regional bank closures passed through the Senate, the committee responsible wrote to all banks “respectfully” asking that they postpone any further closures until the conclusion of the inquiry.

While all other banks agreed to this at least in part, the answer from NAB was a categorical no and it went on to close 53 regional branches, or nearly 20 per cent of its regional network, before the final report was delivered.

It was a bold move its chief executive would have been aware had the potential to upset the senators but history might explain why the bank was willing to gamble with such high stakes: it had done it before and got away with it, closing at least 69 branches between the first two regional bank closure inquiries in 1999 and 2004.

Forty-three of these were while the second inquiry was being conducted.

While the other major banks were not as brazen as NAB, they still tinkered around the edges of the moratorium.

Westpac was caught out withholding information from media resulting in it being reported that the bank was honouring the moratorium agreement in full when it was in fact still going ahead with more than half the closures it had planned, including branches in Coober Pedy and Carnamah that would be left with no banks at all.

ANZ also proceeded with 14 closures, leaving Smithton in Tasmania without a bank, and the Commonwealth chose not to extend the agreement to its Bankwest brand, turning what was once Western Australia’s regional bank for farmers entirely digital and closing 19 regional branches.

Both Westpac and the Commonwealth closed branches in regional coastal areas and larger regional cities, arguing that they were exempt from the moratorium due to population density classifications used by the banking regulator.

They may well have had a loophole to exploit but when it comes to perception, a miss is as good as a mile.

Why win a battle if it’s going to cost you the war?

The final report

The Senate inquiry into Bank Closures in Regional Australia officially came to an end just after noon on May 24, 2024, with the tabling of the final report.

In their own words, the senators found the following:

Committee view*

“Bank branch closures are devasting to many regional and remote communities (and) it is clear that the current model of banking industry self-regulation has failed to shelter regional Australia from the damaging impacts.

Along with an increased need for cash, regional and remote communities are more dependent on face-to-face services. Many have a higher proportion of elderly, Indigenous and/or disabled populations, and may be particularly exposed by bank branch closures.

Vulnerable residents and small businesses may be left ‘high and dry’, or forced to drive hundreds of kilometres to the nearest bank to complete essential and basic financial tasks.

As well as disadvantaging individuals living in regional and remote areas, bank branch closures—particularly the closure of a community’s last bank—often have a devastating effect on the town’s morale. The loss of a town’s last bank causes downstream economic impacts: businesses failing, other services relocating and people moving to be nearer to essential amenities.

The committee believes Australia’s banks are failing to take these impacts seriously. In many cases, banks are simply walking away from communities where they have been a mainstay for decades.

The frustration felt by those in affected communities, including branch staff, is exacerbated by the banks’ disrespectful treatment and failure to meaningfully engage with communities, customers, and staff alike.

Despite their evidence that they do not ‘take these decisions lightly’, banks are clearly failing to comprehend, and take responsibility for, the impact of closures on communities.

Branch closure impact assessments – now provided by banks as an outcome of the Regional Banking Taskforce – represent a disappointing, ‘tick-a-box’ exercise, and are an inadequate reflection of the impacts of closures on communities. The committee believes that many of these so-called ‘assessments’ are being prepared after a decision has been taken or announced, and in some cases, after the branch has closed.

There is nothing in Australia’s existing regulatory architecture that could stop, or even slow the pace, of branch closures, and there is no regulator that routinely deals with these concerns.

Under their current Code of Practice, banks have no obligation to provide face-to-face services if they do not consider it ‘financially viable’ to do so – even for their elderly, disabled or vulnerable customers. Banks can, and do, walk away from communities they have served for decades, with little warning and no consultation.

This is unacceptable.

Banks enjoy a unique position within the Australian economy, with deposits guaranteed by the taxpayer to protect against potential bank failures. They also enjoy access to capital at a discounted rate compared with other entities and citizens. These benefits engender commensurate responsibilities to the community.

Without regulatory intervention, banks will continue to close branches and communities will pay the price.”

The eight recommendations from the Bank Closures in Regional Australia Senate inquiry (2024) are as follows:

Recommendation 1

The committee recommends that the Australian Government adopt a policy recognising access to financial services as an essential service. To this end, it should commit to guaranteeing reasonable access to cash and financial services for all Australians.

Recommendation 2

The committee recommends that the Australian Government commission an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of establishing a publicly owned bank. In investigating this, the panel should examine options including, but not limited to a stand-alone public bank or one associated with, and using the branch network of Australia Post.

Recommendation 3

The committee recommends that the Australian Government urgently develop a mandatory Banking Code of Conduct or Customer Service Code (Code), incorporating a robust branch closure process, to be administered by a regulator with expertise in consumer protection.

The new Code would require financial institutions to:

• undertake meaningful consultation with communities before a branch is closed;
• prepare and submit a comprehensive report on the potential impacts of the closure and identify alternative financial services in the event of closure;
• and implement and fully fund transition arrangements and ongoing support services which ensure access to cash and essential banking services following a closure.

The committee recommends that the regulator would assess compliance with the Code before any closure is agreed to.

Recommendation 4

In enforcing the mandatory Banking Code outlined in Recommendation 3, the committee recommends that the regulator be authorised to approve or defer any closure request. In deferring a closure, the regulator would be authorised to direct a bank to take certain reasonable actions, including to order further consultation or provide additional information to the regulator. The regulator should be provided with a range of penalties should a bank fail to comply with an order to defer closure, or with any other undertaking.

Recommendation 5

The committee recommends that the Australian Government commission the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to explore the barriers to customers switching banks, with a view to allowing those that open and/or maintain branches in regional, rural and remote towns to attract more business.

Recommendation 6

The committee recommends the Australian Government establish the Regional Community Banking Branch Program (RCBBP). The objective of the RCBBP would be to help underwrite the establishment of ‘community bank’ branches providing in-person banking services in regional, rural and remote Australia. Local communities would be required to raise their own capital as well, but the government contributions could help lower the required amounts. Consideration could also be given to using this fund to help enhance financial services available at Australia Post. To support the RCBBP, the committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a supplement to the Major Banks Levy to be levied on the major banks. Funds raised by the supplement must be hypothecated to provide funding to the RCBBP.

Recommendation 7

The committee recommends that the Australian Government works closely with the banks and Australia Post, to require all major banks to have agreements with Bank@Post and to harmonise the terms of Bank@Post agreements to improve fairness and sustainability. Specifically, agreements should include increased deposit limits to support small businesses, provisions to facilitate identification verification, and to handle issues around temporary account closures or multiple signatory requirements. Major banks that do not put in place agreements with Bank@Post to deliver financial services should pay an increased supplementary levy as described in Recommendation 6.

Recommendation 8

The committee recommends that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission consider measures to protect access to personal and business banking services in regional, rural and remote locations. This may include, but not be limited to, proposing an authorisation to circumvent anti‑competitive laws such that banks can cooperate for the purposes of reducing the impacts of bank branch closures on regional communities.

Finishing the job

The magnitude of these recommendations will have come as a shock to the major banks, indicated by an almost complete halt to regional bank closures since the report was handed down.

Even NAB, which closed nearly one branch a week for 15 months while the inquiry was on, has not announced one closure since the report was released.

There is no doubt banking industry representatives will now be madly working their government and friendly media contacts in an attempt to discredit the report, which is due to be responded to by the government by August 24.

That task will fall to the Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, who sadly has shown no engagement on the issue and was responsible for the disastrous final report from the Regional Banking Taskforce being slipped out at 4.52pm on Friday evening before a long weekend.

Regional Australia should instead be looking to the prime minister to show leadership on this given that, as a member of the 1999 inquiry committee, he knows what it feels like to have his hard work on this issue sabotaged by political interference.

Mr Albanese needs to be reminded that more than two decades ago he, like these senators, was part of a team that also heard the stories from people who were drowning under the weight of bank closures and tried to assist them.

And it was his party, Labor, that four years later issued a very clear ultimatum to the banks that unless they started taking their community service obligations seriously the industry would be re-regulated.

Labor lost one of its own during this inquiry with the passing of Senator Linda White, who left her Melbourne base and travelled to some of the remotest hearings to make sure she properly understood the job she had been tasked to do.

Her comments during questioning of the bank executives showed she had quickly grasped that government intervention was the only way to bring them to heel.

This is Mr Albanese’s chance to finish the job Labor started two decades ago by directing his minister to accept all recommendations from this historic inquiry in full.

Like the senators who put their names to the final report, he cannot morally turn his back and let this sort of behaviour continue any longer.

ABOVE: Senator Linda White to Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn – “everything that’s been said before leaves it voluntarily to banks to do the right thing and not close. Consistently, since 1999, that hasn’t worked.”

Download the final report

*Condensed version

UPDATE: Since this story was published it has been revealed that ANZ will be closing its Murwillumbah branch.

This article was originally published on The Regional.

A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.

The report, Water War Crimes, finds that Israel’s cutting of external water supply, systematic destruction of water facilities and deliberate aid obstruction have reduced the amount of water available in Gaza by 94% to 4.74 litres a day per person – just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.

Oxfam analysis also found:

• Israeli military attacks have damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days since the start of the war.
• The destruction of water and electricity infrastructure and restrictions on entry of spare parts and fuel (on average a fifth of the required amount is allowed in) saw water production drop by 84% in Gaza. External supply from Israel’s national water company Mekorot fell by 78%.
• Israel has destroyed 70% of all sewage pumps and 100% of all wastewater treatment plants, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories in Gaza, and restricted the entry of Oxfam water testing equipment.
• Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88% of its water wells and 100% of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed.

The report also highlighted the dire impact of this extreme lack of clean water and sanitation on Palestinians’ health, with more than a quarter (26%) of Gaza’s population falling severely ill from easily preventable diseases.

In January, the International Court of Justice demanded that Israel immediately improve humanitarian access in light of a plausible genocide in Gaza. Since then, Oxfam has witnessed firsthand Israel’s obstruction of a meaningful humanitarian response, which is killing Palestinian civilians.

Oxfam Water and Sanitation Specialist Lama Abdul Samad said it was clear that Israel had created a devastating humanitarian emergency resulting in Palestinian civilian deaths.

“We’ve already seen Israel’s use of collective punishment and its use of starvation as a weapon of war. Now we are witnessing its weaponizing of water, which is already having deadly consequences.

“But the deliberate restriction of access to water is not a new tactic. The Israeli Government has been depriving Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza of safe and sufficient water for many years,” she said.

“The widespread destruction and significant restrictions on aid delivery in Gaza impacting access to water and other essentials for survival, underscores the urgent need for the international community to take decisive action to prevent further suffering by upholding justice and human rights, including those enshrined in the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.”

Monther Shoblak, General Manager of the Gaza Strip’s water utility CMWU, said:

“My colleagues and I have been living through a nightmare these past nine months, but we still feel it’s our responsibility and duty to ensure everybody in Gaza is getting their minimum right of clean drinking water. It’s been very difficult, but we are determined to keep trying – even when we witness our colleagues being targeted and killed by Israel while undertaking their work.”

Oxfam is calling for urgent action including an immediate and permanent ceasefire; for Israel to allow a full and unfettered humanitarian response; and for Israel to foot the reconstruction bill for water and sanitation infrastructure.

Parliament of Australia Media Release

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties will hold a public hearing today for its inquiry into the Exchange of Notes to extend the Exchange of Notes constituting an Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United States of America to Amend and Extend the Agreement concerning the Conduct of Scientific Balloon Flights for Civil Research Purposes of 16 February 2006.

The treaty action concerns the extension of a 2002 agreement between the Australian and US Governments which would allow the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to continue conducting scientific balloon experiments in Alice Springs.

Committee Chair, Mr Josh Wilson MP, said, ‘The extension of this agreement would continue the long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship between the Australian and US Governments. NASA’s collaboration with Australia on space-related activities has contributed more than $1 billion to the local economy.’

‘The existing facilities established by NASA in Alice Springs aid research into matters related to black holes, quasars, and atmospheric and environmental science. Australian scientists directly benefit from these experiments, with the agreement ensuring that Australia is entitled to receive any data from the experiments.’

The Committee will hear from officials from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the University of New South Wales, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

More information about the Committee and its inquiry can be found on the Committee’s website.

Public hearing details

Date: Thursday 18 July 2024
Time: 11.00 am–11.40 am
Location: Committee Room 1R4

The hearing can be accessed online and the program for this hearing is available on the Committee website, along with further information about the inquiry.

By Roger Chao

The Siren’s Call

When twilight cloaks the city’s restless streets,
And fear whispers through the cracks in our resolve,
A siren’s call, like venom, softly seeps,
Luring hearts towards shadows that evolve.

When storms of change rage fierce and unrestrained,
And the unknown stretches vast and deep,
The weary heart, in search of what’s maintained,
Turns to the siren’s call, forlorn and weak.

They speak of walls, of purity and pride,
Of turning back the clock to ‘better’ days,
Yet every brick laid hides what’s inside,
A poison that corrupts, a moral haze.

In the cacophony of anxious minds,
These voices find a home, a place to grow,
Preying on the lost, the scared, the blind,
With twisted truths that many come to know.

“Come,” they urge, “embrace the old ways strong,
Shield yourselves from change and all that’s new,”
But this retreat is where we all go wrong,
Trading progress for a tainted view.

The sirens whisper of a world long past,
Of times when ignorance held sway with ease,
But we, enlightened, know that such won’t last,
For knowledge, once ignited, won’t appease.

In their fortress built on fear and spite,
We imprison not the other, but our soul,
Abandoning the spectrum of life’s light,
For a world that’s stunted, broken, cold.

Remember history’s dark and twisted paths,
Where hatred’s seed took root and spread its blight,
When promises of greatness hid the wrath,
And led us all into the endless night.

So when the night is darkest, and fear takes hold,
Do not be swayed by the siren’s song,
Stand firm, be brave, let your heart be bold,
For in unity and love, we belong.

The siren’s song is danger cloaked in peace,
A promise of security that fades,
For every whisper hides a dark caprice,
Every touch of comfort slowly degrades.

Thus, let the siren’s song be but a call,
To vigilance, to steadfastness in truth,
For in our hearts, we hold the strength of all,
To weave a world where justice guides our youth.

Image from YouTube

By James Moore

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, but thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amidst the wars of elements, the wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.” – Joseph Addison.

We were camping at Cooper’s Creek, a trickling stream that slipped through the dune line on Lake Michigan and emptied into the big water. Everyone was barely out of their teens and the males were confronting a military draft that might prevent them from seeing even one more year. The Vietnam War was an ephemeral being that glided like a ghost through our youth and nudged us awake in our sleep and shaded the sun without clouds. On a random autumn day in 1971 we were gathering driftwood for a fire next to a great inland sea and we were as worried about our tomorrows as we were excited about our modest weekend adventure.

“You probably won’t believe this,” Robbie said, “but this is the farthest west I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, man. Before this trip, it was Grand Rapids.”

“What the hell?”

We both dropped gnarled chunks of wood into the fire as the girls talked and waded along the shore. Robbie was from a typical family of average means with a father who worked in management for an automotive supply company. His parents had purchased a cabin in the northern part of Michigan and he spent most of his summers up there on an inland lake, swimming, fishing, and skimming the water in a motorboat. Their economics were not rare for people building lives in the thumping car economy that was giving the country its driving wheels to move and grow. My parents had struggled after their northward migration from the Mississippi River bottomlands and my perspective on Robbie’s life was that he had been born almost into great privilege.

“I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised,” I told him. “I didn’t see a Great Lake until I hitchhiked over to Huron after high school graduation.”

“But that’s only a hour from your house,” Robbie said. “How the hell do you live in Michigan and not go to one of the lakes?”

“I guess because my parents were always working. There wasn’t money or time. I did always dream of seeing one of those giant freighters from the pictures in our elementary school textbooks about Michigan.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, one was passing under the Bluewater Bridge. Pretty amazing.”

A warm October breeze came across the water and fluttered the walls of our discount store nylon tents that were staked to the soft sand. Not much weather would be required to toss us over in our sleep but the sun laying down in the western haze off towards Chicago suggested a calm night. Robbie, staring at the fire, pushed his hands deep into his blue jean pockets, and asked a question without looking up at me.

“Any chance you want to show me around out West?”

“Not sure what you mean.”

“Well, you’ve been hitchhiking around out there and probably know places to camp and hike, things like that. I’d like to see the Rocky Mountains, for sure.”

“You’re not a hitchhiker, Robbie. We both know that.”

“I’m not going to be, either. Thought I’d drive us.”

“Interesting idea, but I’ve got no money for gas.”

“That’s okay. My parents gave me a gas card for the Torino. I can cover those travel costs.”

“Well, let me think about it.”

There seemed an urgency about his request. I had a sense he might have been hiding a terminal health diagnosis and just wanted to get quick glimpse of the world before his fate prevailed. In the draft lottery, we had both drawn low numbers and were certain to be inducted into the Army and likely face combat in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Maybe he had a vision of his end in the middle of a firefight, slogging through a rice paddy. A few of our friends had already died and every night on the network news the body counts from the war were reported with silhouettes of soldiers and numbers of dead for the U.S. and North Vietnam. Meaningless death was being measured by what looked like a sports scoreboard.

Travel for me felt like running away from my dread. I was not going to war. Too much of my time had already been spent reading protest pamphlets and hitchhiking to Washington for marches to demonstrate against my country’s adventurism, which was just as easily labeled imperialism. Not much more than an hour from my mother’s front door, Dow Chemical Company was making the Napalm and Agent Orange that was being dropped onto humans and vegetation in South Vietnam and Laos. What was not burned out of existence was poisoned and died at varying rates whether it was tropical foliage or humans still formulating images of their futures. I have, in recent years, watched the fathers of younger friends die from cancer directly caused by their exposure to the chemical defoliants used as weapons when they served in that immoral conflict.

Around the first of July the next year, Robbie and I raced across Iowa and Nebraska in his green Ford and I am certain he grew tired of my endless jabbering about the Platte River and how it had served as an artery in the heartbeat of Manifest Destiny. There had to be the ghosts of the almost 20,000 pioneers flying through the cottonwoods leaning over the dark water, dead from arrows, bullets, yellow fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, infections, and even hunger. The number of lost native peoples will never be known as they resisted the invading plague of the ambitious and the adventurous drawn to the unknown possibilities at the end of the Oregon Trail. We did not stop, and turned, instead, to the southwest, in the direction of the national park named after the famed mountain range that divided the continent and stood between the previous century’s dreamers and their dreams.

After getting a map at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, we drove to a trailhead near Glacier Gorge. This was only my second trip to the national preserve and I had spent the initial visit exploring the Endovalley region and had hiked and camped along the old Fall River River Road, a one-way gravel route cut out of the mountainsides in 1920. Robbie’s first adventure was to be a climb up to Black Lake along a reasonably challenging but accessible trail. Neither of us expected physical difficulty even though we were at altitude and the map indicated the five miles up increased our elevation close to four thousand feet to peak at near eleven thousand. The lake sat just below the Continental Divide. Robbie was carrying a small frying pan and a short fishing rod in his gear and I had a collapsible pack stove that we hoped to employ frying trout we pulled from the glaciated lake.

To See the High Country

“So, this is better, eh?” I asked.

We were only a mile up the trail and standing along a creek, bubbling down from melting snow.

“Yeah, just beautiful. Didn’t think it would be this amazing.”

“I doubt anybody does. Wait till you see the Grand Canyon. Completely different experience but overwhelming.”

“I’ve got the rest of the summer.”

“Me, too.”

We did not talk as we climbed but breathed comfortably in the thin air. I was still a serious collegiate distance runner and Robbie had been a high school athlete who had become actively involved in intramural sports at the university. When we came into the clearing at Black Lake we found a grassy spot to pitch our camp tents and a long shadow from the divide obscuring the afternoon sun was already reaching halfway across the water. Robbie was standing on the lake’s edge fishing before I had completed raising my tent. Even though he had grown up next to water, I assumed catching trout was going to be different than hooking perch off the end of boat docks in Northern Michigan. In less than a half hour, though, he had pulled up four ample trout and laid them on his aluminum pan between our tents.

Black Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

“Don’t think I needed a fly or any kind of lure,” he said. “There’s so many in there they were jumping at movement.”

“Pretty amazing.”

“I was confident, too, before we got here. Look at this. I brought a little plastic bottle of vegetable oil for frying.”

“Ha, outstanding. Let’s clean these guys and I’ll get my alcohol stove going.”

Even without the benefit of a wood fire, the smell of the trout frying in the crystalline air affected me almost like an intoxicant. I do not recall ever being as hungry. Robbie had a Swiss Army Knife with a foldout fork and we passed it back and forth between bites, unconcerned about sharing the same utensil.

“I still don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said, abruptly.

“I thought we weren’t going to bring that mess along on our trip.”

“I know. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Who can? But if you can’t put it away in a place like this, it is going to eat you alive, buddy.”

“We’ve got decisions to make, ya know? Can’t be avoided.”

“For now, they can. We still have a couple of years of college. Besides, I’ve made my decision. I’m not going.”

“You gonna go to jail?”

“No, more likely Canada, if I have to. But I hate the cold.”

“I can’t run away from my family.”

“Run away or die in combat might be the final choice, though.”

“I guess I’d go, if I had to, but I’m afraid.”

“If I thought it really had anything to do with protecting our country, I’d go. But it’s a bullshit war that’s just about killing people to make money.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

He did not respond and instead pointed up at the Divide where gray clouds were assembling and darkening into a threatening purple and black. The wind coming down the talus slides off the peaks felt almost like winter and the late afternoon quickly began to look and feel like night. Tired from the five mile climb, we put our gear away and crawled into our tents to get out of the cold. I put on a sweatshirt beneath my windbreaker and laid my head against the soft end of my pack and was asleep in minutes.

I was awakened before dawn by the gentle weight of my tent walls pressing cold against my face. When I pushed them off, they collapsed further into my sleeping space. There was something outside but I did not want to get out of my bag and investigate. Instead, I sat up, unzipped the front flaps, and almost two feet of snow fell into the tent. We had slept through a Fourth of July snowstorm up in the high country. When I stuck my head outside, the only objects not visibly white were the ponderosa pines and the surface of the lake.

“Hey, Robbie. Wake up over there. You gotta see this.”

“See what? Hey, my tent’s falling down.”

“Mine, too. Stick your head out.”

In a minute, his arm reached out as if he were trying to brace himself to stand and it disappeared up to his bicep in the powdery white drift against his tent front.

“Oh, no. What are we gonna do?” He sounded more panicked than wondrous.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think they’ll send rescue helicopters or something?”

“Robbie? You serious? It’s just snow.”

“Yeah, but a lot of it, and we didn’t bring food for another day. The trail’s probably covered, too. How will we find it.”

“Man, the sun will be over that ridge line in a little more than an hour and this stuff will melt fast and we’ll just walk down the mountain.”

“No, no. I think they will send rescue. We can’t take those kinds of risks.”

“Robbie, come on, man. Maybe go back to sleep until the sun hits our tents and this stuff turns into water and mud. We’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be able to sleep.”

We stayed inside our tents, though, and there was warmth in the mid-summer morning sun, even at that altitude. Mud caked our shoes as we packed our gear and made our way back to the trail, which was marked by rivulets of water running over stones and a few fallen limbs broken from the weight of heavy snow. Robbie did not seem interested in talking and we got down to the Torino with considerable time to spare for our trip south to Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods. Driving through Denver he hardly noticed the city and talked about Motown music almost the entire drive until we stopped along the interstate north of the springs and found a hamburger joint with picnic tables by a hill.

“You okay, bud?” His nervous chatter had become silence.

“I guess not. Not really.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Not sure. Feels like everything. I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’m just not having any fun out here.”

“We just got here, Robbie. Wasn’t last night kind of an adventure in the mountains?”

“I don’t think it’s that. I just hate the way everything feels. Our whole country seems screwed up with the war and protests and assassinations. What the hell is going on? How are we supposed to plan our lives?”

“I don’t know, man, just live the best way we know how. Deal with stuff as it comes up.”

He shook his head and crumpled up his burger wrapper and tossed it in a nearby trashcan.

“I’m sure you’re not gonna appreciate this but I’m gonna leave you here and head back to Michigan,” he said.

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, this just isn’t working out how I thought it would.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Not feeling like this, I know. Come on, let’s get your pack out of the trunk. I want to leave now.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He was already opening the trunk. “You’re just gonna dump me here at a burger joint along the Front Range and head home?”

“Yeah, I know it doesn’t make much sense, but it’s what I feel.” He handed me my pack and then opened the driver’s side door and turned to look at me.

“This is kind of hard to believe,” I said.

“Yeah, for me, too.” He stuck out his hand. “Hope you stay safe and have a good summer. I’m sure I’ll see you back on campus in the fall and you can tell everyone what a great guy I am.”

“Robbie, come on, man.”

He sat in the car, turned the ignition to start the engine, pulled the door shut, and grimaced at me as he backed out of the parking space. My friend did not look at me again and quickly turned onto the access road. I tracked his route with my eyes when he crossed an overpass and headed back north on I-25. For a few minutes, I thought he was committing a prank of some sort but he kept going out of my sight. I took my backpack down, laid it against the curb, and sat in the dirt, trying not to think. I am not sure how long I was there, traffic hissing past, but most of the day was gone when I stood up and strapped on my rig and walked down to the state road going west.

I thumbed rides over the Front Range and into the back country, down through Durango and into New Mexico before crossing over into Arizona. The miles passed in the back of pickups and a few trucker cabs, a couple of camper vans, and several sedans. Everyone was interested in my story but me. I slept often in ditches by the side of the highway or back up in beautiful mountain groves of ponderosas in places like the Kaibab Plateau. A few people reminded me I was crazy to be out on the roads alone and that there were lunatics on the move. The country opened up, though, and I stopped thinking about the horrors that had unrolled since that day in 1963 when I was a boy staring at a flickering old black and white Zenith TV, listening to what sounded like the end of the world. My money ran out fast but I got odd jobs doing things like painting and salvage work and washing dishes. My summer was more interesting than Robbie’s, I was certain.

View of Bright Angel Trail, South Rim, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Fifty years later I was riding those same roads on a motorcycle and began thinking of Robbie’s unnamed despair, for himself, for the country where he and I became men. I am with two friends on their bikes and we are winding through the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. The air is warm and the sky is pastel and we roll north off the edge of the Mogollon Rim toward Arizona and then up to the Grand Canyon. It is hard not to feel hopeful and happy on days like this and it is just as difficult to avoid thinking about how little America has changed since that Dallas gunfire took us off course. We have had our victories as people but they feel now as if they are dissolving in the foamy solvent of old anger and we are almost back where we started.

Me ‘n the Boys, New Mexico Back Country

The land in the West, though, lays bright and colorful in the plateau country of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. Hopelessness has no place out here and the rocks of ages are mostly unbothered by human intentions. Surrender, though, can often feel logical after long trials like the ones that continue to test our nation. I doubt we will ever quit because we did not make it this far without overcoming frequent failure.

Leaving the Grand Canyon and crossing into Monument Valley I thought of a man who loved this land before it was known to settlers and outlanders from the East. John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran, had conducted the first geographical exploration of the canyon by floating with a small team down the roaring Colorado. There was endless privation and near death risks almost daily and a saner man might have retired from his improbable task after surviving the horrors of slaughter in war. In his notes, though, Powell expressed only enthusiasm and optimism for the outcome of his efforts.

“We have an unknown distance yet to run,” he wrote. “An unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.”

Turning toward Texas, we passed the giant stone mittens in Monument Valley and I was certain I recognized a spot nearby where I had unrolled my sleeping bag on my wanderings after I had been abandoned by Robbie. It might have been the caffeine from my coffee at the road house that morning, but the idea I had that old connection gave me a fine sense of contentment and the notion that I and my country have an “unknown distance yet to run.”

And I leaned the motorcycle eastward toward the rising sun.

Morning Light, Show Low, Arizona

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.