Home sweet home

Last month marked 21 years living in our apartment in Redfern. It’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since we bought the property. I never imagined we’d still be here after all this time. Why so long? There are so many factors that make it a wonderful home. 

First, the views we enjoy are superb. By day, we have an open and green outlook towards the city and across the neighbouring golf course, followed by a spectacular city skyline at night. Thanks to the heritage-listed properties between us and the city, this view will never be built out.

Second, the building is well designed, in an equally well-designed complex filled with greenery,  heritage buildings and communal amenities including a heated pool, a fully equipped gym and sauna. We’re also part of a caring community where neighbours look out for one another. Residents are proud of our collective home and strive to maintain it to a high standard.

Third, we’re surrounded by excellent local amenities, including two supermarkets across the road (and a third on the way soon), cafes, pharmacies, hairdressers, and public spaces that include a golf course, parklands, and sports stadiums. For example, we treated ourselves to another memorable meal at Ora last night. It's a superb Japanese Fusion restaurant on Danks Street, less than a six-minute walk from home.

Finally, our apartment has its own unique perks, including three balconies, one of which is a massive 64 sqm rooftop entertainment space. Its northeast aspect also means it’s flooded with sunlight all day. Next door, the neighbouring building houses our company’s office and showroom, thus offering the world’s shortest daily commute. 

I’ve annotated the photo above to give you a feel for our neighbourhood and its proximity to some of Sydney's iconic landmarks. I took this photo while flying out of Sydney airport a few months ago. As you can see, a 15 minute cab ride, or 30 minute walk puts us in the heart of the city. Oh yes, did I mention that the airport is a short 15-minute cab ride away? We love that we can be in the air within an hour of leaving home, or on a beach in the Pacific by early afternoon.

Coming up next

Surprise, surprise, we've got plenty of travel scheduled in the months ahead. This year is quietly morphing into something that feels like the initial stages of a transition to retirement. So, where to next?

Garry returned from his extended retreat in Thailand on Wednesday this week. Before he flew home, we decided to book sale flights with Qantas to Tonga. We're off to this laid-back tropical paradise for two weeks at the end of August. We're looking at basing ourselves for much of the time on Foa Island in the Ha’apai archipelago.

In June, I fly to New Zealand twice. First, to spend time with family over the June long weekend at the start of the month, then for business later in the month.  My EO Forum has a retreat scheduled in Queenstown. Once again, I'm responsible for organising the event.  We've lined up several impressive guest speakers, including a guy who sold his family business for millions.

At the end of July, I'll then fly to Melbourne for our company's annual participation in the industry's largest gift-related trade show. Garry will then take his father to Far North Queensland for a vacation with Garry's brother and his family. Ten days after he returns we’ll depart for Tonga.

Then, finally, in December, Garry and I will fly to New Zealand for a week before embarking on a round-the-world ticket largely for business. We'll fly to New York to meet with at least one supplier and a potential business prospect, followed by flights to Germany for the toy industry's largest international trade show and a second week in London meeting suppliers. We then return to Sydney in February to finalise preparations for exhibiting at the local toy industry's annual trade show in Melbourne.

Oh yes, did I mention we're also taking a cruise in the Caribbean during January, in part to celebrate my 60th birthday. We'll visit a dozen countries over two weeks.  Add in Tonga, and my tally of countries I've visited will reach 86 destinations, or 88 if you count two fleeting border crossings.

Landslide election

Australian politics was transformed by last weekend’s Federal election. Against all expectations, the Australian Labor Party returned to power with an increased majority, a higher primary vote, and a decimated opposition. Vote counting is still underway, and some of the most tightly contested seats may take another week to declare.

However, one thing is clear. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defied the so-called "incumbency curse" to be re-elected Australia's prime minister in what can only be called a landslide. Heading into the election, the current Government had a majority of one seat. On current projections, Labor will finish with more than 90 seats in the Lower House, at least 14 more than the 76 seats required to secure a majority Government.

The Coalition opposition will struggle to finish with more than 40 seats in the Lower House. Furthermore, the current opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has lost his seat. This is the first time in Australian history that an opposition leader has lost their seat in an election. Equally, this is the Coalition’s smallest caucus since Federation. The state of Tasmania now contains only Labor MPs (and one longtime independent), while most capital cities have at best one or two Coalition MPs in the metropolitan area (Adelaide and Brisbane have none). 

Since WWII, only four incumbent Governments have increased their primary vote during an Australian federal election, but none at the level of the current Government, and none have increased their majority. Albanese becomes the first prime minister to win back-to-back elections in over 20 years. It’s all too easy to forget that Australia churned through nine prime ministers during this period. Before that, we'd experienced 12 years of relative stability under John Howard.

The result is even more extraordinary given how badly the Government was trailing the opposition in opinion polls four months ago. In January, the polls predicted a resounding win for the opposition, with the opposition leader beating Albanese as preferred Prime Minister. Australia looked set to follow the rest of the world and back a more conservative, right-wing Government. Two factors have swung the vote in favour of the Labour Party.

First, Donald Trump’s global trade tariff war has boosted the fortunes of incumbent parties as voters seek stability during a time of growing uncertainty. Just two weeks ago, the incumbent Canadian Government was returned to power after trailing badly in the polls earlier this year. In more recent months the nation has endured sustained rhetorical attacks by the American president and been subject to rising tariffs. In response, Canadian voters rallied behind the flag and rejected the opposition's strongman style of divisive politics.

Here at home, Dutton also tried playing the strong man card. He occasionally mimicked Trump's style, adopted elements of his conservative policies and provoked regular culture war debates. For much of 2024 and the early months of this year, this approach appeared to be a winning strategy. Support for Dutton and the Coalition grew steadily stronger in the polls. 

That is, until Trump’s chaotic first one hundred days in power progressively turned Australians against him in record numbers. By late April, polls reported more than 70 percent were concerned Donald Trump would make them worse off financially this year. As a result, once tarred with the Trump brush, Dutton struggled to shake it.

Second, the Coalition has run an extraordinarily complacent and often dysfunctional election campaign. Spokespeople regularly contradicted their leader, sometimes within hours of a policy announcement. More than one policy was dropped or amended on the fly, while others lacked substance when scrutinised by the media. The apparent lack of preparation caught many by surprise.

Whether you support Labor or not, the possibility of a stable Government and stable leadership for the first time in two decades offers plenty of potential. As the Sydney Morning Herald stated a week or so ago, Albanese is the better option for Prime Minister, but only if he starts doing something bold with his mandate.

I couldn’t agree more. We’ve had five years of “small target” politics where both sides of the house have played it safe. The reforming zeal of the Hawke/Keating years, and even the tax reforming initiatives of the Howard Government, are long overdue. Australia desperately needs tax reform, more efficient Government and budget discipline that brings its Federal budget back into sustained surplus. Let’s see what happens next.

Update: 20 May

Vote counting has finally concluded. Labor secured 93 seats, giving a 38 seat majority in the lower house. The Liberal National coalition finished with 43 seats. Another 12 seats went to independent candidates and The Greens. In the upper seats, Labor only needs the support of The Greens to pass legislation in the Senate.

The man who saved my life

Few people have heard of Lieutenant Colonel Stanislava Petrov. He was a system engineer assigned to Servikov-15, a command-and-control bunker outside Moscow that housed the Soviet Union’s brand-new early warning system for detecting Western ICBM launches. I learned this week that this man potentially saved my life and the lives of countless millions in September 1983.

I was living in Upstate New York, in the city of Syracuse, as an exchange student at the time. As I’ve previously posted, 1983 was a year of heightened Cold War tension. President Reagan had called the Soviet Union an evil empire in March. He’d also announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), better known as ‘Star Wars’, in the same month.

Then, on 1 September 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet fighter jets, resulting in the loss of 269 lives. The plane had strayed into a region filled with Soviet naval bases, which months earlier had been subject to mock attacks by the US Navy during FleetEx 83, a huge maritime training exercise involving three aircraft carrier battle groups.

So, how did Petrov save my life? On 26 September, alarm bells started ringing inside Servikov-15 shortly after midnight. The early warning system had detected the launch of an American Minuteman ICBM, which was heading straight for the Soviet Union. Petrov determined the warning a false alarm as ground radar hadn’t detected a launch. Then, soon after, the system detected another four launches. Petrov calmly decided to ignore standard protocols and declared this another false alarm.

Petrov didn’t normally run the control centre. A colleague had called in sick that night, and he offered to stand in. As luck would have it, Petrov knew the new system intimately. He was conscious of its shortcomings and felt strongly that it had been rushed into service. As a result, when alarms began ringing, he was hesitant to accept their data.

Petrov wisely concluded that a five-missile attack made no sense. Training scenarios always assumed a first strike consisting of hundreds, possibly thousands, of missiles. He saw no logic for the reported launches. Thanks to his in-depth knowledge of the system and conflicting information from other sources, he prudently concluded the system had suffered a computer glitch. He showed extraordinary presence of mind amid pandemonium.

Months later, it was confirmed that an early warning satellite had picked up the flare of sunlight glinting off clouds. Had Petrov simply followed orders, reported the attack without caveats and encouraged a pre-emptive counterattack, a devastating nuclear war would have started two days before my eighteenth birthday. Upstate New York contained several first strike targets. It was also due east of the jet-stream passing over the ICBM fields of North Dakota. As a result, Syracuse would have been smothered in deadly radioactive fallout. 

I’ve always thought that Australia and New Zealand were the perfect place to hunker down after a nuclear holocaust. How ironic, then, that I was living in the USA when the world came closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union years later that we learned of Petrov’s actions that September night.

I've illustrated this post with photos I took during a private tour of the Titan Missile Museum outside Tucson, Arizona. Garry and I visited this extraordinary facility in September 2011.