Scurvy Dogs
18th century problems lead to 18th century solutions...
Last week, a 51-year-old man presented to Sir Charles Gairdner hospital in Perth with a painful rash on his legs — a streak of tiny red pin-points. Doctors conducted an extensive investigation and all sorts of tests to try and work out what had caused this inflammation of blood vessels, which continued to spread while the man was in hospital.
The doctors discovered that the man's diet mainly consisted of processed foods — that he was unable to afford fruit and vegetables. He had undergone bariatric surgery eight years prior, and had stopped taking the vitamin and mineral supplements prescribed to him post-surgery because, like the fruit and vegetables, he was no longer able to afford them.
More tests were conducted, this time assessing the man’s nutritional status. He had no detectable levels of Vitamin C and was very low on other key nutrients. The man had, it turned out, contract scurvy — a disease synonymous with 18th century sailors and pirates — a disease of the distant, brutal, past.
But here it was in 2024, running up the leg of a man living in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, in the state that creates much of that wealth.
How was this allowed to happen?
Earlier this month, this year’s Foodbank Hunger Report indicated that next to half of low-income households (those with incomes under 30k) have faced food insecurity in 2024. “Low-income families who were only just getting by have now reached their limits,” said Foodbank Australia’s chief executive, Brianna Casey. “They are routinely skipping meals, compromising on the quality of nutrition of their food, and going without personal care and household products.”
People are starving under a Labor government. Such is the shoddiness of that government's prioritising, that close to a third of all Australian households — that’s around 3.4 million — have experienced some sort of food related hardship within the past year. It is difficult to reconcile this with the impossibly huge numbers we see floating around, numbers that suggest a land of plenty: $368 billion on submarines that we’ll never receive, $455 billion in export revenue made by the mining industry in FY23, the Prime Minister forking out $4.3 million for a clifftop mansion…
We live in a sea of abstractions, of wealth so vast and infinite that it’s impossible for those of us removed from it or lost in its machinations to comprehend its ebbs and flows, and yet, we are caught in its back draft, a sort of money-pit ricochet, where those sinking in this vast wealth’s wake are left clawing about for empty milk cartons and air-filled chip packets just to keep afloat.
In Western Australia, this windfall-whiplash is obnoxiously Dickensian, like a character called ‘Mrs Conny Crumpets’ played by Miriam Margolyes. The ever churning wealth knell of the mining boom has created a state, and a city, of fiscal polarisation, where vast amounts of resources are dug up, trucked away, and shipped off all so we can build an ever-sprawling string of satellite suburbs up the coastline and line the pockets of billionaires who look and talk like Captain Planet villains.
But the ear ringing white noise of our Forever Boom masks the poverty and inequality that belies it — a city of empty shop-fronts and overdoses, where a blated police force corals the boom’s shades between food banks and homeless shelters.
Both Western Australia, and Australia at large, has pissed away the boom on follies and fancies befitting a dying Roman Emperor, while letting everyone who doesn’t own at least two investment properties slip between the cracks. The war on the poor waged on Australians in the past fifteen years — by Coalition and Labor government’s alike — has been so meticulous, so deliberate, so frightening in its exactitude, that a man rocking up to hospital with scurvy can hardly be said to be surprising, but rather an inevitable result of these embittered designs.
You can say the impossible riches of the boom were, and are being, squandered by successive governments, but the truth is those riches were sent to the right people, if by those people. What we get are the table scraps, and what Albanese and co. is expecting from us is to somehow turn these into an all you can eat buffet.
The disconnect between our leaders and those struggling to keep up with the cost of living is now so vast that to try to bridge it is tantamount to assault or insurrection. Albo receives each criticism of his handling of this crisis as if some socialist Martin Luther is running up and nailing them to his forehead, visibly wincing if someone confronts him with the cold stark reality of the situation, which, unfortunately for him, must include his absolute lack of policies dealing with it. In response, he brings up his mother and his houso-childhood, like a sort of Freudian Fagan, saying “you wouldn’t hit the son of a single parent, would you?” whenever anyone points out his woefully malignant inaction.
The reality is that sixty-nine per cent of single-parent households have been food insecure in the past 12 months, up two per cent since 2023.
This situation is so bad that it has created what would be a golden opportunity for a Labor Government with anything resembling imagination and/or balls. The Albanese Government are sadly lacking in either, and have focus-grouped themselves into a corner or dutiful dithering, where their sole economic priorities seem to be interest rates and funnelling protection racket money to the yanks.
The joke is that voters are champing at the bit for serious economic reforms. A Guardian Essential poll of 1,139 votes conducted earlier this month found that close to 70% of Australians are ready for more radical solutions, including price caps on groceries, rent, and energy bills, reducing income taxes, funding more social services, and raising the level of income support for the unemployed.
But what we get instead is scurvy. As Albo and Dutton trade barbs over who got the better handjob in the Qantas Lounge, it’s impossible to feel like this government or its alternative (I mean, Dutton may propose hunting struggling families for sport, who knows) are set on doing much of anything to address this ongoing horrorshow.
However, we have reached a point of desperation where they should be worried. Not just for their citizens, but for themselves. Keep pushing people like this, and maybe scurvy won't be the only thing from the 18th century to make a comeback…
