Australia’s largest Mother’s Day event makes a difference for breast cancer.

Mother’s Day Classic is Australia’s largest breast cancer research fundraiser, and organisers are encouraging people to get on board for the Sunday May 11 event in the fight against a disease that impacts one in 8 women.

Registrations are open now, find the event nearest you at www.mothersdayclassic.com.au/events.

This year there will be 97 around Australia – in every capital city as well as regional and rural locations in every state and territory, from Ararat (Vic) to Yamba (NSW), from Karratha (WA) to Weipa (Qld).

In 2013, a record $5 million was raised by 135,000 supporters who took part in the event around Australia.

In 2014 a major milestone will be celebrated – the event, which began in 1998, will pass the $20 million mark in funds it has raised for the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s research program. This research has had a real impact on survival statistics and has also helped answer research questions for a range of other cancers.

Mother’s Day Classic national chair, Louise Davidson, said as well as funding research, taking part in Mother’s Day Classic was also a wonderful way to show support and solidarity to those in the community dealing with breast cancer.

“Participants will tell you there is something special about the atmosphere at the Mother’s Day Classic, whether you attend a huge capital city event or a small community gathering,” Ms Davidson said.

Make Mother’s Day, May 11 2014, memorable – register and fundraise

Mother’s Day Classic is all about raising awareness and honouring those impacted by the disease, as well as funding vital research into treatment, detection and prevention.

“The more funds we raise, the faster a cure can be found. So instead of just registering this year, why not fundraise? Funding research is a great investment in the future,” Ms Davidson said.

Major sponsor ME Bank is offering the ME Bank Inspiration Award to fundraisers. Raise $100 or more through online fundraising and you’ll be invited to take part and you could win $5,000 for a person who inspires you and $500 for yourself, in an ME Bank EveryDay Transaction Account with Pink Debit MasterCard*.

Since the event began in 1998, Mother’s Day Classic has become the largest funder of National Breast Cancer Foundation research.

In that time, 5 year survival rates for women diagnosed with breast cancer have increased to 89%.

Despite these advances, on average 7 Australian women die each day from breast cancer. With research, more can be done.

“Mother’s Day Classic is a celebration of spirit and hope that together we can contribute to making breast cancer history,” Ms Davidson said.

To register, donate or volunteer go to www.mothersdayclassic.com.au

Ultra marathon runner Chris Pye is running around the Treasury Building right now. You can catch him all night tonight until midday tomorrow as he runs for 24 hours to bring awareness to the plight of refugees being illegally mistreated by our government in our name.

As reported in the Westender last week, My Pye is embarking on the endless run to nowhere to highlight the plight of these refugees who came to Australia seeking help and no have nowhere to run.

Supported by the Refugee Action Collective, Mr Pye is handing out brochures to passers by and inviting the media to listen to his views on their plight. So far, only the ABC, Westender and Channel 31 have paid any attention to his efforts.

Members of the South West Chamber of Commerce got a big pat on the back at breakfast on Thursday when Matthew Snelleksz reminded us all of the number of things we put on the line to be in business.

“You deserve to work less, go home early, make your families happy and retire wealthy, because you have put everything on the line,” he told the assembled throng in the Loft on Boundary St. “You deserve a reward.”

“The problem is that many small businesses are broken,” he said.

The signs of a broken business are that the owner

• is working long hours,
• does not have enough money,
• cannot take holidays and
• cannot effectively delegate to staff.

He confessed that four years ago he was in that position, not taking the same advice he has given his accountancy clients over the last twenty years.

A life threatening experience in the open ocean off Fiji involving an empty scuba tank, a rope and a missing dive knife, jolted him into awareness and he decided to do something about it.

He not only turned his business around, he recorded the steps in a book called Breaking the Entrepreneurial Struggle, which he awarded to two lucky business operators in the room.

The primary focus of his turnaround strategy is that business owners need to focus on the essential items, instead of getting bogged down in the day to day detail of running a business.

This is a familiar message, think The four hour work week, Do what you love and other self-help business books that focus on getting back to the basics.

The difference is that Snellekz does not offer any magic bullets he simply points to ten logical steps that are the essential ones in fixing a business. “This is written by a small business owner, for small business owners about the reality of small business here in Australia,” he said.

The first three are the clincher. If you can’t get these right, in the right order, then you will never escape the gravitational pull of the Entrepreneurial Struggle.

They are:

1. Grow sales
2. Grow profit
3. Grow cashflow

“The order is critical,” he told the chamber.  He noted that growing cashflow without fixing profit just increases the speed at which you are losing money. Similarly, trying to cut costs or reduce overheads without increasing sales is a sure way to shrink your business.

He rates talking regularly to your top 20 customers, on site when you can, closing major deals and staying ahead of market trends as key roles for the owner or CEO of a business.

“If it is not critical to the business, delegate, outsource or offshore it. Do not do it yourself, you have a broken business to fix.”

Snelleksz’ emphasis on succession plans and retirement strategies is interesting, and consistent with other breakfast presentations. “If you don’t have milestone’s for getting out, you will keep going past your maximum effectiveness. Every business has a use by date, and if you do not refresh and renew it before then, it will begin to fail.”

There were a number of business consultants in the room, all focused on slightly different versions of the same approach.  Struggling businesses have plenty of places to go for advice, but the bottom line is to increase the top line first.

The threat of ‘peak data’, and what that could mean for the way we connect and access essential services in the future, is the focus of a report released by CSIRO.

Director of CSIRO’s Digital Productivity and Services Flagship Dr Ian Oppermann said wireless technology had been adopted at “breakneck pace” in Australia and around the world.

“The data rates that people now expect from their mobile services are about a hundred times the amount we thought possible only two decades ago,” Dr Oppermann said.

The report, World Without Wires, points out that wireless communications rely on the availability of radiofrequency spectrum. The spectrum has practical limits and more spectrum cannot be created so we are faced with a finite resource and growing demands to use it.

Today’s technologies and infrastructure will be hard pressed to support further increases in demand, both in terms of speed and volume, for wireless data and services over the coming decades.

Many global cities, including here in Australia, are fast approaching the point of ‘peak data’ – where user demand for wireless internet, telephony, and other services can no longer be fully accommodated by the available radiofrequency spectrum.

“Currently the useable spectrum is divided up and allocated to various uses, such as TV/radio broadcast, emergency services, and mobile phone communications for example,” Dr Oppermann said.

“In the future, how spectrum is allocated may change and we can expect innovation to find new ways to make it more efficient but the underlying position is that spectrum is an increasingly rare resource.

“Some estimates suggest that spectrum demand will have almost tripled by 2020, and existing infrastructure will need to rapidly expand its currently available capacity if it’s to meet this demand.

“With more and more essential services, including medical, education and government services, being delivered digitally and on mobile devices, finding a solution to “peak data” will become ever more important into the future.”

World Without Wires examines the role that ubiquitous access to high-speed wireless connectivity will play in enabling a range of future applications and social developments, including:

The replacement of digital TV and telephony services by internet-based, personalised streaming services

Widespread sensing technologies that optimise and improve almost every aspect of our daily lives
The widespread use of wireless positioning technologies, from making driverless cars the norm to enhancing retail experiences through “virtual concierges”
“tele-services” as the default model of service delivery for government and businesses, with education, healthcare and other public goods being delivered via private digital networks
A radical improvement in the way existing wireless infrastructure accommodates ongoing growth in service demands, including smaller cells, smarter antennae, and beyond.

“Such developments will have a profound impact on both Australia and the rest of the world, constituting significant market opportunities, and a chance to deliver widespread public good from our wireless research and enterprise community,” Dr Oppermann said.

To access a copy of World Without Wires visit: www.csiro.au/wireless

To find out more about CSIRO’s Digital Productivity and Services Flagship visit: www.csiro.au/dpas

Once again we have taken a stand to limit carbon dioxide emissions — a stand that only lasted one hour.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then we have failed. So to be sure you know what I’m blabbering about— and will continue to do so —I’ll tell you now.

Earth Hour was once again held on Saturday this weekend. It has been going on since 2007, on the last Saturday in March. Started by WWF Australia; backed by Fairfax and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore its first year.

In 2008 it became an international event that has gathered a lot of traction. Always getting covered in the media and by social media with great enthusiasm.

Weirdly enough, as someone that reads the news daily, I didn’t notice any mention of it on Saturday. Usually when I eventually drag myself out of bed, eyes barely open and clutching a cup of coffee, Earth Hour would be one of the top stories I would encounter.

Not this year tho. I only got reminded about it by chance when someone I follow on Twitter mentioned it the day before. If I hadn’t read that tweet, I would be non the wiser about Earth Hour this year.

I think we should take that as a sign that it’s time to take a new approach— up the game a bit —and maybe accept that it has very little effect on carbon dioxide emissions.

During Earth Hour it seems to be popular to light a few candles so we don’t sit in complete darkness. The issue with using candles is that they are petroleum-based. In other words, not that environmentally friendly — nor are they energy efficient.

Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg wrote in The Australian that, “candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. Light one candle and it will emit as much CO2 as you were saving. Light a bunch of candles and you’ll have emitted much more CO2. So Earth Hour may actually increase CO2 emissions.”

Not forgetting that most light bulbs and electrical appliances uses an extra jolt of electricity when powered on.

His criticism doesn’t stop there. He also claims it mocks the poor.

“While more than a billion people across the globe make a symbol of forgoing non-essential electrical power for one hour a year, another 1.3 billion people across the developing world will continue to live without electricity as they do every other night of the year. Almost three billion people still burn dung, twigs and other traditional fuels indoors to cook and keep warm. These fuels give off noxious fumes that kill an estimated 3.5 million people each year, mostly women and children.”

I have to admit, that the first time I came across Earth Hour I did participate. But I also remember when that hour had past, the lights and the TV got turned on again, as if it had never happened — but I felt good about participating.

There lies the issue with Earth Hour. There is so much focus on participating one hour once a year that we think, as long as I participate that one hour I’ve made my contribution — my hands are clean and no-one can say I’m not doing my bit for the environment.

It is the perfect textbook example of [slacktivism][4]. We sit at home, turn off our lights and electrical appliances for an hour and stroke our egos raw online — I’ve done my bit, have you?

Completely oblivious to the fact that the majority of us actually turn of our lights and electrical appliances every night for at least six hours. In other words, we have six Earth Hours every night year after year. That one Earth Hour a year were we might burn petroleum-based candles do nothing, other than possibly create more carbon dioxide emissions.

There is of course no denying it when it comes to campaigning, Earth Hour is extremely successful. It hasn’t only engaged people online, but also governments around the world. But it seems to fail in keeping the engagement going for longer than that one hour a year.

As I mentioned earlier, it is prudent that we figure out how to keep people engaged more than that one hour a year if we want to have a positive impact on our climate.

Not only that. We need to figure out how to take more action than flicking a switch.

Switching off your lights for an hour, once a year, is too easy. We should be expected to do more than that.

A quiet revolution in food distribution is taking place in our midst but most of us remain blissfully unaware. Some of us buy food from market stalls or smaller suppliers. The rest of us pop off to the supermarket or the local shop without a second thought. When it comes down to it, what’s the difference?

The answer is, just about everything.

Drought relief has raised awareness about the viability of many farms. The scandal around SPC, once a farmer’s cooperative and now part of Coca Cola Amatil who wants to close it, has reminded all of us how important it is to keep an eye on who owns our food production.

The sad truth is that the family farm has been disappearing for decades and food factories are becoming the norm.

Variability and economies of scale

The Roman Senate fixed the price of grain “low enough to prevent the people rioting and high enough to keep the farmer on the land”. The fall of Rome is often attributed to the impossible nature of this task in a sprawling empire.

Modern corporations are more subtle. The dollar-a-litre-milk campaign sets the retail price of food so low that only huge businesses with subsidies from governments and major supermarkets can afford to supply them.

When Coles executive Peter Scott was sacked in November 2006 for misconduct it was revealed that he had a 20 percent stake in a major beef supplier Tasman Group Holdings. Coles paid everyone less than the production price for beef but then paid a bonus to a small number of suppliers, including Tasman Group. Those suppliers could then buy struggling, unprofitable farmers who were not getting the bonuses. This practice continues today.

So it is that corporate agribusiness has virtually eliminated the “enthusiastic rustic” from the agricultural landscape.

Fighting back

Food Connect General Happiness Manager, Emma-Kate Rose, told Westender that the farmers supplying her company receive 50% of the retail dollar.

“We want to ensure we engage great family farmers in our local region who care about producing great food while caring for the land.”

A highly-distributed network of community hubs, city cousins and sympathetic outlets distribute the food directly to the customer.

“Customers have to get used to the seasonality of food. We do not sell kiwi fruit from Italy, oranges from California or garlic from China,” she said. “That means that sometimes the things you need for a particular recipe are not in the box”

“We assist customers by providing relevant recipes and tips for eating seasonally. It’s great for your health too, because buying in season means you are getting the most beneficial nutrients. We think of food as our medicine, to the preventative health benefits are substantial.”

As well as fresh food, Food Connect provides a range of processed food from olive oils, organic peanut butter and raw honey to milk, bread and eggs.

The Food Connect Foundation works with global organisations to redress the balance between farmers and industrial food production. The foundation’s website sums up the problem neatly.

“From 1990-2007 the number of Australian grain farmers dropped by a fifth. Dairy farmers have declined by three-quarters. Family farmers are squeezed to ‘get big or get out’. The financial and social burdens on many farmers and their families have reached and exceeded breaking point. The rate of suicide and depression amongst male farmers and agricultural workers is more than double that of the urban employed.”

Emma-Kate told Westender that drought and market conditions have driven farmers to despair with a reported 32 suicides in the district.

Westenders recently supported the Foundation to send six Aussie farmers to La Via Campesina in Jakarta. We all need to raise our awareness of where our food dollar is going.

<Link:> Search “food connect” “La Via Campesina” “Tasman Group Holdings”

<author>Geoff Ebbs