The news depresses me greatly at the moment. Each morning, I read my feed on BlueSky over coffee and vegemite toast, and it turns into doom-scrolling. The only thing that has cheered me up recently is the story of the Perth Zoo elephant Permai being relocated to South Australia in order to combat loneliness.

4. Participate or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News

I did a quick review of public Australian university accounts (plus Bond University) on X, and the majority are active. Flinders University and Queensland University of Technology are exceptions, together with the University of Canberra and The University of Newcastle. The table below shows my findings. (Apologies for the poor formatting of the table - my html skills are rusty.)

I classified accounts as follows:

1. Stated Inactive if the account has an indicator that the account is inactive, irrespective of when the last post was created;
   
2. Functionally Inactive if the account has not posted in the past month, but no obvious indicator that the account is inactive;
   
3. Active if they had a post in the last month.

Here's the message that appears on the X account for Flinders University:

Only two universities had no presence on X that I could find - the new Adelaide University and the University of New South Wales. 

Call to Action

I will write to the Marketing Director for the university where I currently work to respectfully suggest that they should cease using X to promote the university's activities, as associating the university brand with a platform whose proprietor uses Nazi salutes and flirts with the far right in Germany is ultimately damaging.

I will also write to the Marketing Director for the university from which I graduated to suggest the same.

Universities Australia (whose X account appears to be active) helpfully publishes a directory of Australian university Marketing Directors.

It is not the boycott that Robert Reich advocated, but universities withdrawing from X helps to stop the normalisation of anti-semitism and hate speech. I urge you to write to the universities with which you have a relationship also.

Video of three train types taken at Østerport Station, Copenhagen on 30 August 2024: 

• Double-decker regional train travelling from Helsingør to Køge hauled by an electric Siemens Vectron engine 
• Local S-tog (S-train) 
• Øresunds tog (trains that travel across the Øresund bridge between locations in Denmark and Sweden)  

I love travel, I love planning travel, I love researching travel options. But mostly I love travel. I first travelled overseas with my parents in late 1978 / early 1979 to the Phillipines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. I travelled to New Caledonia on a school trip in 1983. I first travelled to Europe in 1985 as an exchange student. My most recent trip was in August-September 2024 to Copenhagen, Denmark, after a 10-year break from international travel. This is my jumping off point to discuss changes in travel from the 1980s to now.

Nyhavn canal with multi-coloured buildings and boats. Photo taken August 2024.

What hasn't changed

Travel from Australia to the UK, Europe and North America is still a massive schlep

When I first travelled to Europe, it was on Yugoslav Airlines (an airline that not longer exists) from Melbourne. The flight stopped in Singapore and the Middle East to refuel, before a change of aircraft in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (a country that no longer exists), then stops in Zagreb and Stockholm, before finally landing in Copenhagen. It took roughly 36 hours.

Our most recent trip to Copenhagen was on Singapore Airlines, with a single stop and change of aircraft in Singapore. It took roughly 30 hours, although 8 hours of that was a long layover in Singapore. Admittedly this is faster, more direct and on better / more comfortable aircraft than in 1985. Even in 1985, there were faster, more direct and more comfortable options. The 1985 Yugoslav Airline aircraft appeared to have been leased or purchased from an African airline - not a comment on African airlines, but an observation that the aircraft was old. 

Nevertheless a 12-13 hour flight leg in economy is still hard work. Jet lag from crossing 8 or 9 time zones still sucks.

Travel as a wheelchair user is still harder than it needs to be

Wheelchair users are first to board the plan, and last to disembark (by a long shot depending upon the availability of airport assistance staff). We need to pick our airlines carefully for those that provide the best support, and getting that assistance requires a visit to the GP and filling in a form to disclose our diagnoses, even though a diagnosis is not really germane to the provision of support. 

Hotel accommodation is still hit and miss. More hotels have accessible accommodation, but the nature of accessibility varies enormously, as does the ease with which the availability of accessible rooms can be identified and booked. The Hilton and IHG chains are standouts in generally allowing their accessible rooms to be identified and booked from their websites. Scandic Hotels have lots of accessible hotel rooms, and great information on their website about accessibility features, but customers need to email properties to confirm bookings for accessible rooms.

Public transport is the bright spot though. More accessible transport options are good news for getting around your travel destination as a wheelchair user. 

Australia still uses a paper incoming passenger card

Travellers entering Australia need to complete a hard-copy incoming passenger card. Singapore also requires completion of an incoming passenger card - SG Arrival Card (SGAC) with Electronic Health Declaration - but the Singapore card can (must) be completed online.

I'm guessing that the Australian incoming passenger card information is digitised at some point to perform risk assessments and share data with other agencies. See Collection of Passenger Name Records. In which case, having incoming passengers complete the passenger card online could expedite risk assessments and data sharing. From a passenger's perspective, it would be much easier to complete an incoming passenger card online before a flight, rather than scrabbling around to find a pen and fill in the information, much of which is redundant to provide for Australian passport holders. 

What has changed

Mobile technology

When we travelled to Europe 10 years ago, we took only one iPad. However, in the intervening 10 years, using digital devices to interact with the world around us has become ubiquitous. This time we took 2 iPads, 2 iPhones and 2 Apple Watches. We probably could have left one or both iPads at home, but the iPad is my preferred device for interacting with the web. Having an iPhone was not essential, but highly useful in the following ways (noting that these are obviously many of the same ways that having an iPhone is useful at home):

• Finding out the public transport options to get from A to B. 
• Needing to track down the meeting point given by the guy on Facebook Marketplace to buy beautiful Søholm ceramics from the 1960s. 
• Taking photos or video.
• Reading books. 
• Checking in/out for public transport tickets.
• Ordering take-away for pick up from the local Asian take-away.
• Transferring funds to cards being used overseas.
• Paying the gas and electric bills that came in whilst we were away.
• Checking the photos sent each day of our dog enjoying his stay at boarding kennels.

And in a strongly digital economy like Denmark, having Apple Watches for digital payment was hugely convenient.

The 2 iPads, 2 iPhones and 2 Apple Watches were not in themselves sufficient - we needed the following accessories to get best use out of them:

• Both iPhones have Telstra pre-paid SIMs. We bought pre-paid international roaming packs to give us access overseas. I topped up with a Saily data-only eSIM, thinking that I would need more data than I did, but this was unnecessary.
• A VPN to secure communications on hotel / public wifi networks. We chose NordVPN.
• Charging bricks that work with international power outlets. We found that Bunnings (somewhat surprisingly) had the best prices for travel power adapters, and we purchased two Jackson World USB Chargers to give us 4 USB-A and 2 USB-C outlets, with adapters to work in most places, including Australia.
• A case to carry and organise charging bricks and cables. There are lots of these on the market, with some really gorgeous (but expensive) examples. We opted however for a $10 case from Target that is also sold through KMart - Travel Tech Organiser Case - Anko. 

Influence / utility of social media

When we downsized in preparation for moving a couple of years ago, a handful of Lonely Planet travel guide books were amongst the items we donated / gave away. The internet has made dead-tree travel guide books largely obsolete. When I looked for up-to-date information about visiting Copenhagen, I consulted official sources, like the Visit Copenhagen website, but Facebook and YouTube as well. Specifically, a Facebook group for visitors to Copenhagen, with diverse membership comprising both recent visitors and current residents. 

When I needed advice about the best way to pay for public transport during our stay, I posted a question to this group and got very helpful advice about an option that I had not previously considered, and which ultimately saved us money. (For the record, it was the DSB app.) Want advice on hotel options? Or best day trip options from Copenhagen? Which bakery has the best pastries? Feasibility of schedule of planned activities? Should I cross Øresund to visit Malmö? The Facebook group for visitors to Copenhagen will generate plenty of responses and opinions, although not necessary a consensus view. It does take a critical eye to sort through the responses to decide what is useful.

The Facebook group does get lots of visitors asking how to get from Copenhagen airport to their hotel, and whether they should take a taxi, an Uber or rent a car. (Hint - the answer nearly always is take the Copenhagen Metro or train. And Uber does not operate in Copenhagen.) There are several user-generated YouTube videos describing in detail how to travel from the airport to central Copenhagen. Like this one or this one or even this one. Such videos a very useful for wheelchair users, as even though they are not created specifically with wheelchair users in mind, being able to 'walk' the path via a video assists in identifying whether there are insurmountable access barriers. It is not perfect by any means, but definitely better than a printed guide.

Payment methods

In 2011, we travelled with travellers cheques, but found it hard to convert them outside of larger cities. Ten years ago, we took a combination of cash and cards, including the Commonwealth Bank Travel Money Card. This card is a pre-paid credit card which can store cash in up to 16 different currencies. The idea is that you watch exchange rates prior to travel and convert and store cash when exchange rates are most favourable. 

I am a big fan of the Travel Money Card, but mine gets most usage not for travel, but as a risk-free credit card. When I need to enter credit card details into a website, e.g. when there is no PayPal option, I will transfer cash to my Travel Money Card and use it rather than my actual credit card. I keep a minimal balance on my Travel Money Card, so that if it gets hacked, little damage can be done.

The Travel Money Card has two drawbacks for travel though:

• You can only store cash in up to 16 currencies, and these do not include the Danish kroner. The Commonwealth Bank has clearly picked the currencies that are going to be most useful to its target market, and unfortunately these currencies do not include the Danish kroner (or Swedish kroner or Norwegian kroner). This does not prevent the Travel Money Card from being used, but means that transactions will incur fees.
• The Commonwealth Bank Travel Money Card does not integrate with ApplePay, so I cannot use it on my Apple Watch. The physical card can be used to tap-and-go or swipe, but not being able to use it on my Apple Watch is a deal breaker.

With these drawbacks in mind, I started looking for alternatives. A little bit of Googling surfaced the concept of a neobank - digital-only financial institutions - and Wise as an example of a neobank. I looked at other neobanks, but was attracted to Wise because it is an authorised deposit-taking institution in Australia (initially registered with APRA under the former business name, TransferWise).

My Wise account has the following advantages over my Travel Money Card:

• Money can be sent and stored in 40 currencies, including Danish, Norwegian and Swedish kroner.
• Wise offers a digital card that integrates seamlessly with ApplePay. (A physical card can also be obtained for a small fee.)

In addition, the Wise app and website are really easy to use, and their exchange rates beat the bank's exchange rates. Wise charges transaction fees to load and send money, whilst the Commonwealth Bank does not, but for transactions not in Australian dollars, Wise still comes out in front.

For example, at the time of writing, the Commonwealth Bank would charge me $AUD153.37 to put $USD100 on my Travel Money Card, whereas Wise would charge only $AUD148.04 to put $USD100 on my Wise card, including fees of $AUD1.13.

Assuming you do not have a third-party paying into your Wise account, Wise needs an account from which it can debit funds when you add money. I use my Travel Money Card for this, and transfer money onto this as needed to top up my Wise account. In this way, the Travel Money Card is not obsolete; it is just relegated to being a supporting player for travel.

Conclusion

This blog post could easily have been titled 80s to Now: How Technology Has Changed Travel, because the common underlying theme to changes highlighted here is technology. Whether it is mobile technology allowing travellers to navigate to places they would otherwise be unable to go in unfamiliar cities; or social media technology providing a waiting pool of local experts to answer travel questions; or fintech solutions to make it easier and cheaper to access funds whilst you travel. There are undoubtably downsides to technology and travel - having to dodge selfie-taking tourists at popular spots comes to mind - but for an individual traveller like myself, the positive change aspects outweigh any negatives.  

A few months ago, a friend and colleague mentioned that he had installed Mirabella Genio smart light globes at home, that they operate from their phones. Initially, I discounted the idea of using something similar in my home. We had moved not long ago into a newly built home, with recessed lighting in the ceiling in most rooms, which seemed at first glance to obviate any need for smart lights.

Except when I thought about it some more, I realised that the lights we use in most rooms are not the recessed lighting in the ceiling, but stand-alone lamps, many of them vintage. And for the most part, these lamps were inaccessible to me - either I could not reach to switch them on/off, or the switches were too hard to operate.

I started to research options for smart lights that could provide a greater degree of accessibility, and ideally be controlled by voice command. I quickly found that voice control would only be achievable with a smart home platform - Amazon's Alexa Hub, Google Nest Hub or Apple Homekit Hub.

Decision #1: Which smart home platform?

Apple is not the obvious choice in this field - more devices support Amazon's Alexa and Google Nest, and their home hub devices are wider in variety and cheaper. Amazon's Alexa supports Android and iOS devices, whilst Apple Homekit supports only iOS devices. However, as a household, we are Apple die-hards, deep in the Apple ecosystem. 

I was keen to proceed with this project with existing devices wherever possible, i.e. not needing to purchase new devices was a bonus. And our Apple TV 4K was able to be an Apple Home Hub. This meant that Apple was our chosen smart home platform. In retrospect, the Apple Home app was an added bonus, available on macOS and iOS devices, and easy to use. 

Decision #2: Existing Apple ID or new Apple ID?

Both my partner and I have our own Apple IDs. Having just gone through an exercise to disentangle accounts from an ISP-provided email address after the ISP decided that it no longer wanted to provision email, I was keen to ensure that any accounts used to operate the house 'infrastructure' were equally accessible to both of us. 

This meant creating a new email address (Gmail account) and a new Apple ID based on that new email address. I then set up Family Sharing with the new Apple ID as the family organiser, and our personal Apple IDs as 'family members'. This meant that configuration of smart devices would be independent of both our personal Apple IDs, but management of devices in Apple's Home app could be shared with the personal accounts. 

It is worth bearing in mind that Apple Family Sharing appears to be intended for parents to manage their kids' usage. As such, it has some limitations, particularly around purchase sharing. 

Setting up our existing Apple TV 4K as a home hub required a change of default user to the new family Apple ID. The Apple TV was a gift to my partner a couple of years ago, and very much her domain. It appeared for a while that changing default user would mean my partner losing her personal settings, so we put this on hold.

Decision #3: Which Apple Home Hub device?

Decision #4: Which smart lights?

We have so far configured seven smart lights in five different rooms. These lights can be managed using the Apple Home app on macOS and iOS devices (including Apple Watches), or via voice command using 'Hey Siri' in the presence of an Apple HomePod or a macOS or iOS device. Four of these lights have automations set up to switch on the lights at a certain time each day, and switch them off at another designated time. A bit like a mechanical timer switch, except one that does not need to be reset if the power goes out. 

Most importantly, lights that were previously inaccessible to me are now accessible.

Afternote: And the Apple TV 4K?

Initially we decided not to proceed with using the Apple TV 4K as a home hub. However, we have just recently taken a deep breath and set up the Apple TV 4K as a home hub. Fortunately, this did not result in any loss of settings for my partner. The motivation for revisiting this decision was the possibility of using a stereo pair of Apple HomePod Minis as TV speakers. (The Apple HomePod Minis were bought through Facebook Marketplace - one nearly new, the other brand new, and still with cellophane wrapping intact - for a substantial discount over retail price.) 

This proved to be one of the most fiddly/tricky parts of this project, as the Apple TV 4K did not recognise the HomePods until it was disconnected from ethernet. Further investigation is required to see if we can get the HomePods to work as speakers whilst the Apple TV 4K is connected to ethernet.

Final thoughts

My father has recently had surgery that led to a few complications, such that he needs some additional help at home. His level of comfort with websites is reasonably small - last year, when I suggested that he might buy me a gift voucher from Etsy as a Christmas present led to his declaring that he never wanted to visit Etsy's website again. 

So I offered to put in a request for an ACAT assessment in order that he might get some additional help at home, or at least get put on the waitlist for a package.

So far, so good. I did the right thing and declared that I was completing the application form on behalf of my father, rather than completing the form as my father. I was contacted to advise that Dad would need to give his authorisation to the Department of Health and Aged Care for me to act on his behalf in this way. This seems entirely reasonable, so I downloaded the PDF form to record his agreement, completed the form, and arranged for him to sign in the right places, after reading the form's contents.

No problem so far. I scanned the form as a PDF and uploaded it into the My Aged Care portal, which sits behind the myGov portal. This generated an error message to indicate that file uploads could be no greater than 5 MB in size. Fair enough. Try as I might, however, I could not get the PDF file to be less than 5 MB in size. I deleted the instruction pages, keeping only the pages that had actual content needed for this authorisation, with no luck. So I tried another approach to export to PDF document in another format - this time, a PNG file. Success! The resulting file was under 5 MB in size and uploaded successfully with no error. My job was done.

Or so I thought. The following day I had a phone call from the Department of Health and Aged Care. The person on the other end of the phone line advised that they couldn't open my PNG files - they could only open JPEG and PDF files. OK. Back to the drawing board. I'll export each page of the form as a JPEG file and upload multiple files. So that's what I did. The resulting files were under 5 MB in size and uploaded successfully with no error. My job was done. 

Or so I thought (again). The following day I had another phone call from the Department of Health and Aged Care. The different person on the other end of the phone line advised that they couldn't open my JPEG files - they could only open PDF files. OK. Back to the drawing board. I'll export each page of the form as a PDF file and upload multiple files. So that's what I did. The resulting files were under 5 MB in size and uploaded successfully with no error. My job was done.

I expressed more than little frustration at the second person who rang from the Department of Health and Aged Care - not her fault or responsibility obviously that their web portal has more than few user interface issues - but I suggested she convey the following feedback to the department's web developers:

1. I am an IT consultant and I had difficulties navigating the file upload process. How on earth do people in their target demographic (people over 65 years of age) cope with this website, particularly people in the upper end of this demographic cohort? 
2. File sizes of 5 MB are too small. I get that you need to put some constraints on the file sizes that people can upload, but perhaps the department needs to pay AWS a bit more money for file storage and allow uploads to 10 MB.
   
3. There is no indication about allowable file types on the web page itself. I was completely unaware that they couldn't read PNG or JPEG files until they phoned me. At a minimum, the web page should indicate what types of files are acceptable. 
4. Better still, the web page should not allow users to upload files types that are not acceptable. This has security implications as well, particularly if the web page is allowing executable (EXE) files to be uploaded. (I was tempted to try this to prove a point, but didn't.)
5. Finally, the web page should not require me to provide the name of the uploaded file in addition to uploading the file, i.e. you've got the uploaded file, why do I need to tell you what it is called?

Good website design is not (or shouldn't be) a mystery anymore. The federal government with the assistance of its own Digital Transformation Agency should be leading the way in user experience (UX) design with departmental portals that sit behind the myGov portal, e.g. the ATO, Centrelink, My Aged Care, the NDIS, and especially those portals where users are likely to have accessibility needs or user interface requirements that are greater than those of the average user. Instead, we have a mish-mash of portals that look completely different despite serving similar needs, e.g. My Aged Care and the NDIS, where user experience is so poor that posting the form was looking like a better option than persevering with upload.

Last year was a milestone year for lots of reasons:

• COVID-19
• Vaccinations
• Decluttering and downsizing
• Tova's obtaining her first academic contract (not casual) job
• Me leaving Flinders University after 27 years and starting a new job at TechnologyOne
• Bugsy, our stumpy-tailed cattle dog, learning to sit and drop

Because leaving Flinders University after 27 years was such a huge milestone, I would like to reproduce the off-the-cuff speech I gave at my farewell morning tea. This won't be a faithful reproduction, undoubtably I will embellish some bits and forget others, but it will be the best I can recall.

But first, some background to explain what lead up to leaving. Flinders University restructured the Information and Digital Services area of the university at the beginning of last year. As part of this restructure, my substantive position as Manager, Student Systems, was disestablished and I was mapped to a new position at the same level, but without responsibility for supervising staff. Importantly, a new manager position was created for student and finance systems, but all the indications were that I would not be considered suitable for this position. My choice was to apply for the new mapped position, or apply for a voluntary redundancy. The voluntary redundancy provisions were very generous, but I still needed a job, as I was not yet close enough to retirement to be able to leave employment without another job on the horizon.

I did something I still cannot believe I pulled off. I worked my networks, and schlepped my CV around to organisations where I thought I had something to offer. This resulted in a couple of job offers just in the nick of time, including one from TechnologyOne.

So here's a version of the thoughts I gave at my farewell morning tea.

I started working at Flinders University on 4 January 1994, over 27 years ago. Just to remind you how long ago that was, especially younger colleagues who were born after 1994,  Paul Keating was Prime Minister. John Dawkins had been the minister responsible for higher education, and had ushered in changes that saw Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) merged to create new universities, e.g. University of South Australia, and/or merged with existing universities. As part of these changes, Sturt CAE was merged with Flinders University. In 1994, this change was still fresh enough that staff based at Sturt referred to Flinders University as 'up-the-hill' as though it was a different institution. Who are we kidding? Academic staff from that era STILL refer to Flinders University as 'up-the-hill' as though it was a different institution.

Professor John Lovering was the Vice-Chancellor, and the job of Vice-Chancellor was not yet the hectic, political management job that it would later become. A colleague joked when I first started that the VC's executive officer needed to wake the VC up to get him to sign things. Professor Lovering had, however, managed the Dawkins reforms, the introduction of HECS and a university-wide restructure that saw the creation of a faculty structure that lasted well into the next century. 

In 27 years, Flinders University has had five vice-chancellors:

• Professor John Lovering
• Professor Ian Chubb
• Professor Anne Edwards 
• Professor Michael Barber
• Professor Colin Stirling

Prof Chubb was my favourite for no other reason that I saw him wandering the corridors of level 3 of the Student Centre with a blood-stained shirt and tie, poking his head into random offices to say hi. He had obviously had some kind of accident, which caused him to visit the nurses in Health and Counselling for first aid. Whilst there, he took the time to investigate who was working in the nearby offices. 

During that time, I have had a number of different positions. However, it was a move to work in Student Systems in 2003 that set the course of my career for the next 18 years. With the exception of a brief period as Manager, Enrolment and Student Finance, I worked in systems-related areas for the remainder of my time at Flinders.

I was involved in two major system changes: the move from CS to Ci in 2007 to 2009, and the transition from an on-premise student system to a cloud-based student system in 2017 to 2018, plus lots of smaller release upgrades, including an upgrade comprising multiple releases in 2013. This period saw a proliferation of external systems and integration projects to connect these systems to the student system - CRM, timetabling system, examination system, HR system, curriculum management system, identity and access management systems. And let us never forget the C2R2 project in 2009 to 2010, where the university standardised topic unit values at 4.5 units, getting rid of 3, 6, 9 and 12 unit topics, reshaping the entire curriculum in the process. 

Throughout this time, I worked with some fantastic people. A vey small number of genuinely evil people as well (no-one who attended my farewell morning tea), and a small number of plonkers (again no-one who attended my farewell morning tea), but these were outnumbered by far by fabulous folks, like:

• Marlene Pitman
• Stephen Jones
• Gayl O'Reilly
• Michelle Evans
• Anna Jessep
• Mark Materne
• Pamela Monk
• Barb Richards
• Jill Smith
• Jeff Turner
• Marianne Treffers
• Brendan White
• Cathryn Wyers
• Jerry Garnett (yes, even Jerry)
• and all the remaining Student Systems folks, especially Rebecca Baulch, Orenda Zhang and Qiuyu Zhang

However, when the university disestablishes your position, and gives you every indication that you would not be considered for the new senior position, so that your career progression has effectively come to an end, it is time to move on. I am fortunate to be able to take advantage of the university's voluntary redundancy provisions and move to a Business Consultant position at TechnologyOne.

I will miss the fabulous folks at Flinders and I am forever grateful that Marianne rescued the name plate from my old office in the basement of the Student Centre before this space was gutted. It was my absolute honour and privilege to have been Manager, Student Systems, for the best part of the past 10 years.

Working at TechnologyOne has been a change in some ways, and in other ways, it is more of the same. It seems clear that universities might not be employing staff, but still have capital funds for project expenditure. This is good news for folks like me in the consulting business. I have had exposure to new functionality and projects at other institutions that are both interesting and exciting to work on. No regrets so far. 

After 20+ years in our current house, we have accrued a huge amount of stuff, and have been decluttering and downsizing progressively over a couple of years. Added to 20 years accumulation of stuff, two parental bereavements that came with an inheritance of stuff, and another parent who downsized in part by moving stuff from his house to ours, and you have a recipe for an episode of Hoarders.

We have learnt a few things along the way. Here's a few of the things we have leant.

There are three main options for downsizing: dumping, donating and divesting.

Dumping

Donating

• Vinnies on Semaphore Road for bed linen as they have large bins outside when their shop is open.
• The Animal Welfare League SA operates op-shops in Adelaide and has a sorting centre at Gillman. They accept a wide variety of goods.
• Second Chances SA is a charity that supports people in prison, their children and families. They operate an op-shop at Sturt that seems to always be busy when we have dropped off donations, and a second-hand furniture shop at Richmond that both sells furniture and provides furniture assistance packages to folks in need. They will collect furniture donations.

Divesting

Summary

Postscript

Workplace training last week has given me pause to think about the nature of the way work is currently organised at my workplace, and how it affects me as a disabled person. This post muses upon on some of these thoughts.

But first some disclaimers:

I am a disabled person, who works full-time and earns a good income. This gives me choices that other people with disabilities do not have. I am acutely consciously that employment makes me privileged. 

I am absolutely not an expert on Agile, but I have participated in multiple training sessions and worked in Agile teams for over a year.

... and some definitions:

Agile: "Agile software development is an approach to software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer(s)/end user(s)." [From Wikipedia accessed on 10 March 2019.]

Ableism: "Ableism is the discrimination or prejudice against people who have disabilities. Ableism can take the form of ideas and assumptions, stereotypes, attitudes and practices, physical barriers in the environment, or larger scale oppression. It is oftentimes unintentional and most people are completely unaware of the impact of their words or actions." [From the Urban Dictionary accessed on 10 March 2019.]

My workplace has adopted Agile methodologies over the past couple of years.

The training was on respectful workplaces, in other words, an anti-discrimination, harassment and bullying workshop, with a focus on micro-aggressions and the way that these reinforce negative messages about gender, race, sexuality, disability and other statuses protected under human rights legislation. Whilst we discussed in abstract terms the slights we might be inadvertently inflicting on imaginary colleagues, a big, fat, grey elephant sat in the corner of the room and snorted derisively.

"You have stand-up meetings with a colleague who uses a wheelchair."

Stand-up meetings are not unique to Agile, but have a particular value in Agile in order for project team members to check in with one another on a regular basis to review progress and identify barriers or impediments before they become too big. Such meetings are also known as daily scrums, but at my workplace 'stand-up' is the predominate terminology.

Wheelchair users refer to themselves "going for a walk"; blind people say "see you later". In the same way that we understand that Captain Oates saying "I am just going outside and may be some time" in Antartica does not mean that he needed a lot of fresh air, 'walking' is not the point in "going for a walk"; it is a figurative expression that can describe a range of behaviours that may not include actual walking. 

However, standing up is the point in stand-up meetings. Standing up is intended to keep meetings short, to ensure participants become uncomfortable if they talk too long. Participants who are also wheelchair users are faced either with meetings looking at their fellow team members' crotches or enduring excruciating jokes about 'sit-down stand-up' meetings.

Agile also prioritises face-to-face conversation as the best form of communication (see Principles of Agile Manifesto). Kanban boards are used to visualise work in progress, and manage workflow for teams working with an Agile methodology. Physical Kanban boards often use sticky notes on whiteboards; digital boards use custom software to replicate the same process flow. There is considerable debate about whether physical or digital Kanban boards are better. See here, here and here for just three discussions on this point. 

Sticky notes make a frequent appearance also in workshops, along with butchers paper, textas and pipe cleaners (also called chenille sticks).

I have limited use of my hands and have progressively lost hand functionality. I took all my lecture notes by hand in university, but I rarely write now, except to sign my name, and I find hand writing a cumbersome and difficult task. For that reason, I do not carry a pen with me nor a notebook. I can recall needing to argue a special case to be allowed to have a laptop instead of a desktop computer at work, but now laptops are the norm. For work purposes, I carry an iPad to meetings for taking notes. In my work environment, arriving at meetings with an iPad, Microsoft Surface or laptop is par for the course. Negotiating the world with the assistance of digital devices has largely become normalised. 

It concerns me that, just as interacting with the world via digital devices becomes the norm, and the way disabled people negotiate the world of work is no longer remarkable, workplace ideologies are propagated that privilege certain types of interactions over others, less inclusive interactions over more inclusive ones, e.g. standing up versus sitting down. In particular, Agile appears to privilege physical interactions over digital or virtual interactions, e.g. writing on sticky notes rather than creating tickets in Jira or Trello, hand writing rather than typing into an iPad.

For someone whose level of disability is fair-to-middling, the proliferation of workplace sticky notes and other aspects of Agile is a reasonably minor annoyance, a micro-aggression, if you will. I get annoyed, but it does not generally affect my ability to participate in workplace activities. But what if I was the late Professor Stephen Hawking? To be clear, I am not comparing myself to Stephen Hawking - we are both wheelchair users, both with undergraduate degrees in mathematics and both sometime coxswains. But there the similarities end.

I substitute Stephen Hawking in this scenario, not because he transcended disability - quite the opposite, he embodied his disability - but because his status and privileges make it easier to identify when micro-aggressions occur as a result of his disability. Stephen Hawking was a white, heterosexual male who acquired a disability later in life. He was well educated and obviously, exceedingly intelligent. We do not have to imagine his pre-disability self - films have been made about him starring attractive, non-disabled actors, allowing folks without disabilities to imagine themselves as Prof Hawking. In addition, Prof Hawking's prodigious presence in popular media paradoxically both humanised him and promoted his cyborg identity.

In contrast, people with disabilities are frequently dehumanised and degraded in Australian society. Discrimination, harassment and generally crappy treatment as a result of disability are so commonplace that they often go unnoticed: a man with a disability refused boarding to a cruise booked and paid for months in advance; a blind woman refused an Uber ride due to her guide dog; women sexually harassed and assaulted in sheltered workshops, where despite looking like a workplace, normal pay and industrial protections do not apply; a woman with Downs syndrome refused tourist visa to visit her father in Australia; some of Sydney's busiest rail stations are still not accessible.

If it was not me, but Stephen Hawking in your Agile team, would stand-ups and writing on sticky notes still seem like reasonable activities for your team? I call this the 'Stephen Hawking test'.

The Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) publishes quarterly claims by parliamentarians for expenses for travel, office expenses, telecommunications and employee expenses here.

The IPEA was established in 2017 and provides a window into parliamentarians' expenditure, and consequentially public scrutiny. It is doubtless also (indirectly) the reason why the Hon Stuart Robert MP decided to repay unusually high internet charges. 

I am especially interested in what parliamentarians are reading as it provides an insight into who they are and what they are thinking. It is an expenditure that I do not begrudge parliamentarians - indeed, the more books they buy and read, the better for everyone. 

I reviewed all expenses claims for publications under the heading Office Administration Costs for July-September 2018 to identify claims for books, excluding copies of Hansard. This is unlikely to be 100% accurate, as I am not sure that I could identify books reliably. There appears to be coding applied to the claims, but the coding might not be applied consistently. The code that appeared to be applied most frequently to books was also applied occasionally to newspapers, for example.

Amongst claims for publications, The Australian, The Age, Australian Financial Review, The Monthly and a wide selection of regional newspapers (Tenterfield Star, The Scone Advocate, Cowra Guardian, Kalgoorlie Miner, Beaudesert Times, Townsville Bulletin, Port Douglas and Mossman Gazette, Cassowary Coast Times, Herbert River Express, Balonne Beacon, Chinchilla News, The Western Star, Fraser Coast Chronicle, The Murray Valley Standard, Coastal Leader, The Murray Pioneer, Derwent Valley Gazette, The Huon News, The Northern Argus, West Coast Sentinel, Sunraysia Daily, Bairnsdale Advertiser, Riverine Herald, The Cobram Courier, The Warrnambool Standard to name but a few) appear most frequently. But it is books that I'm interested in.

Unfortunately, the pickings are reasonably slim. Parliamentarians are possibly self-censoring their claims, but the most recent expenses claims provide for interesting reading nevertheless. 

Here's the raw results by state:

NSW

Senator the Hon Concetta Fierravanti-Wells

Silent Invasion: China's Influence In Australia
The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949-1963. Volume 1
The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963-1975. Volume 2
The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO 1975-1989. Volume 3
A Shorter History of Australia
Charles Bean's Gallipoli: Illustrated
First Among Equals: Australia's Prime Ministers from Barton to Turnbull
Howard: The Art of Persuasion
Menzies: The Shaping of Modern Australia
The Forgotten People 75th Anniversary Edition
The Forgotten People: Updated 

Ms Emma Husar MP

Outliers: The Story of Success
I'm Australian Too
The Hidden Lives of Learners

Ms Emma McBride MP

Role Play the Parliament
Message in a Sock
Alfred's War
In the Lamplight
Lest We Forget 

The Hon Michael McCormack MP

The Australian Game of Football 

NT

QLD