Dependency Ratios

Do dependency ratios matter to you?

All of us who live in this shire must be keep a close eye on these ratios. Just as accountants keep watch over certain ratios that indicate the financial health of an organisation we, the community, must be mindful of our dependency ratios. This will ensure that the warp and weft of our social fabric does not become stretched. Social fabric is just a term that can be used to describe all the networks of different community groups, organisations and informal relationships that we need for a small remote community that relies on reciprocity to function well. Stretch that fabric too hard and something will fail.

One example of a dependency ratio might be the number of volunteer fire fighters we have per property. When Karridale fought the bushfires of 1961, with no expensive equipment and no communications technology, they had a huge advantage measured by their dependency ratio.

As my neighbour, the late Jack Dennis, said, “Every household had someone in the brigade.”

Every household.

And the brigade members moved from house to house snuffing out the ember attacks before they could take hold and become a blaze. They could leave their wives and children because they knew that every member of their family had been drilled in what to do.

No amount of spending on technology can substitute for having a fire fighter in the family, for having the “knowledge” with you all the time. A fire fighter in the family means that you won’t overlook preparing your house before the bush fire season, you won’t just light up a pile of leaves in an absent minded moment, you won’t leave glass where the sun could reflect and start a fire. It means a whole lot of important things that need to be attended to will be attended to.

Another example is St John’s Ambulance service. These people are all we have when a medical emergency occurs and we need treatment fast. But remember they are volunteers. How many residents can each member carry? How many call outs to assist visitors in crisis is it fair to ask them to do?

Our St John’s volunteers will attend anyone who needs help, we all know that and we value them highly. Just as important are employers such as Debbie O’Connor , of IGA, who one hundred percent supports her staff leaving instantly when they get a call out. But even as we praise them, thank them, and feel grateful for their dedication we must be realistic. When a volunteer attends a visitor incident this is a draw down on their time, and their time is a finite resource.

We all pay for the ESL levy, directly or indirectly, and this funds expensive management staff, training and equipment used by the volunteers. If we look at the SES, for example, it is manned by volunteers and we need to be fully aware of how much of the financial cost and volunteer man hours are spent supporting the resident community, and how much is supporting the tourism industry and mining industry.

Here are a few SES examples.

A roof blew off a property in Brookfield, two SES volunteers from Alex Bridge and Karridale travelled up to Margaret River, paying their own transport costs, to effect temporary repairs to the place because the owner is a FIFO worker who was away at the time.

A young man arrived with a group to start a holiday, drank a little too much alcohol, jumped into the Margaret River and didn’t surface. SES volunteers attended to search and recover.

Some South Korean men arrived in Margaret River, went fishing and slipped off the rocks to their death. SES volunteers attended to search and recover.

Visitors to a house surrounded by bush allowed their two children to wander away and the entire community seemed to turn out with the SES and Bush fire brigade members to search for them. 

This last example had a happy ending and everyone felt elated at how caring and wonderful our community is. But the earlier examples were tragedies that will have affected the volunteers, maybe caused a little reactive depression a feeling of failure and sadness that they couldn't help. Every call out will have some effect; a few days loss of income for the self-employed, less time to spend with their own family.

A quality of life issue for many old people living in this community is whether they can have a meals on wheels volunteer deliver to their door, whether there is a library service volunteer willing to assist, a volunteer driver to drive them to Bussleton, Bunbury or Perth for medical treatment, and cheerful willing helpers to make an outing to HACC a welcome morning of craft, chess, quizzes and conversation.

As employment prospects locally become focused around nothing but seasonal, part-time and poorly paid work more young people have to leave to find careers elsewhere. Their departure leaves caring to be coped with by a smaller pool of able bodied, this profoundly affects our dependency ratios.

Our school children are regularly asked to pick up rubbish around the locality, rubbish that has been discarded by thoughtless people. Thoughtless residents? Or thoughtless visitors? Are we shaping a generation of young people to believe that their role is to clean up after others? Is that a healthy thing for a community?

The actions undertaken by our volunteers are the things that make our community strong, cohesive and comfortable to live in, they determine our social culture.

Yesterday Christine Brown made a note on Facebook that she had seen Bindi Warrilow, of the Greens Party, and Ken John, of the Liberals, handing out Labour how-to-vote cards because the Labour representative had reportedly died very suddenly. Such acts of humanity, selflessness, and empathy with others, is what defines the culture of our community. But those who are of one culture can so easily be overwhelmed by other cultures, particularly when the new culture has wealth available.

But when will our community reach a “tipping-point”?

Imagine if Bindi and Ken had been faced with three other parties who had no representative available, or five, or ten. When would they have said, “Enough, we just can’t do it any more.”

Imagine what could happen to a community if the real estate agents were encouraging retirees to come here, to this shire, when they have ended their careers in the city? Or if they were marketing to FIFO workers, focusing their sales pitch on the caring community available to support a family while the bread winner is away up north earning loadsa money?

How long would the caring community be able to care?

In debates around this issue it is often said that when we reach our growth targets we can begin to move away from this reliance on volunteers and employ professionals. To some extent this has happened already, in the past decade we have employed an Emergency Services Manager and a Community Development Manager, plus associated staff, both positions that we managed very well without in the past.

In the past community groups could request a matched funding grant from the shire. This meant that if a group wanted to buy something they had to raise half the cost and the shire provided the remainder. Today the shire sends out reams of paperwork for community groups to complete and return in order that they can be professionally assessed for a community grant. The professional shire staff decide if the community group needing a tea urn, or whatever, is a worthwhile use of rate monies. This is part of the community development activity. Some of the professional Emergency Management time is spent trying to inform members of the community about how they should prepare for bush fire.

There are many other areas shifting towards professionalization this way.

A move to more professionals may initially suit the FIFO workers because they are earning the large salaries, and introducing cash into the dependency debate is psychologically beneficial for the takers. It reduces feelings of guilt.

But what of the retiree who has lived here all their life? Those who didn’t move to the city and get cashed up, didn’t make their fortune in tax beneficial property investments, maybe they were creating community here in the SW. They were manning the volunteer bush fire brigade, building the community halls, physically building the library for our primary school, running the scout group, the CWA, the whole range of community groups and events that are not for financial benefit but for the value they give us as a community.

Many of our older residents left school at 14 years and had very long working lives, but most of them weren’t making millions. And now, just when they are no longer productive in economic terms, and may need to draw down on that great accumulation of community support they find that the services they provided for free have suddenly got a hefty 21^st century price tag. A price tag that any iconic international destination might be proud of. A price tag that Eric Noakes complained about recently in the AMRTimes. Eric is one of our esteemed local elders, a man who has certainly given many thousands of hours in community service over many decades. When Eric Noakes speaks it would be a wise move for our councillors to listen.

The price tag Eric is asking questions about deserves a little forensic review.

Somebody is changing our social landscape, moving us from a strong self-supporting community towards a professionalised group where many struggle to pay the rates. Those struggling are often our own local volunteers not the absentee investors.

I don’t believe we were consulted about this change, but if we decide we want to change how fast do we want this to happen, and are we all aware what the social impact will be. If we change to a professionally based social welfare and support community will such a change destroy what people have moved here for?

Maybe our new councillors will help to protect our dependency ratios.

When the CEO says that,

“Of course the cost of many of these areas is offset by revenue they earn through fees and charges for the services provided.”

Will they ask for details, how much, who pays?

But the true bottom line is that money is not the answer when we are wanting to protect our culture.

Will our councillors insist that we have strategies in place to protect our intangible cultural heritage and most importantly will they ensure that our dependency ratios are published every year?