National Day unnatural

23 January 2023

Start the conversation

Fascinating news from the Australian Public Service (APS) recently with staff members offered the chance to work on Australia Day – fascinating because it was the APS which played the leading role to set up Australia’s new national day as recently as 1980.

It was the APS that introduced Australia Day medals for government employees and which convinced the Governor-General to add the Public Service Medal to the Order of Australia.

It was APS that convinced the States to remove Australia Day from the ‘Monday after 26 January’ to the day itself.

It was also the APS that surveyed the nation, including the Aboriginal communities, asking them to choose their most appropriate date for Australia Day.

The nation chose 26 January – not because it was historic, but because it’s the perfect day to end a summer holiday, return to work and prepare kids for school. You can’t get any more ‘Ausralian’ than that!

And it was also the APS that convinced many of the nation’s most loved and respected Australians to put their popular names and personal time to support the new Australia Day, including great Australians like John Newcombe, Herb Elliott, Jackie Weaver, Dawn Fraser, Mark Ella, Neville Bonner and hundreds more who have followed the APS’s lead since.

From PS-sssst!’s position, it’s ironic that Australia only has one national day and it’s that day that it hits the hardest.

Let’s hope we’ve grown up by next year!

Going to water

To Victoria now where recent floods have seen the Government dive in to ‘world-first’ technology and check the condition of the State’s water-effected roads while they’re still underwater.

While the technology techs 8,400 kilometres of possible dangers, the State has found a fodder of fun for a foraging PS-sssst! which dived on the amusing, merrying and attempting onomatopoesis to deliver not one but two examples.

Leading with example number one, the attempted acronym for the State’s Intelligent Pavement Assessment Vehicle is the painful acrobatic acronym ‘iPAVe’ and the second rates the State’s Minister for Roads and Roads Safety, whose delightfully ‘roady’ aptonym is ‘Melissa Horne’.

Some days are just made to start smiling!

It’s a dog’s Tribunal

Bear a care now for the doggies who call Canberra home in the national Territory where the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal has released a ‘canine support program’ aimed at reducing the anxiety levels of people who find themselves using services the Tribunal provides.

Launching a new-year’s video, the Tribunal sets out the many types of assistance it offers people, including “those who were vulnerable or had specific needs” with “testing technology aids, large print copies of documents, arranging an interpreter, (and) accommodations for assistance animals.”

All very good, agreed, but at least one popular ‘assistance animal’ has reason to be concerned.

Can an assistance ‘canine’ really expect a fair go at the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal when the Tribunal’s official abbreviation is the anti-dog acronym ACAT?

Meow!

The ‘tong’ is silent

To New South Wales now where the state’s National Parks and Wildlife Service has announced that a number of Brush-tailed Bettongs have been brought home from Western Australia, coming back to their north-central NSW surroundings for the first time in more than 100 years.

Welcoming the 55 Bettongs home into a large feral cat and fox-free conservation area, the good people in NSW discovered they now had a new baby which they chose to christen ‘Bella’.

Congratulations to the keepers and the Bettongs on producing the first member of the new generation, but we can’t stop scratching our head over their choice of the baby’s name.

Why, we wonder, wasn’t the baby Bettong baptized Betty?

Maybe they’re saving it for a boy!

In SCAM we lust!

And finally, a reminder after the summer holidays now that we’re all back in the working world to keep our eyes open for SCAMs which can pop up anywhere and at any time.