Sanitation
Sometimes we need to create a big stink to change people’s minds. I’d like to create a Big Stink.
We forget the lessons of history at our peril.
In the late 19th century it took the stench of raw sewage in our cities to convince politicians to pass legislation and provide safe sanitation and water to protect Australians who were dying daily of preventable diseases like diarrhoea.
As a politician one of my roles is to attend official openings. Like all of my colleagues I’ve opened schools, sporting facilities, roads, bridges and buildings complete with photos in a hardhat and safety vest. It is a part of the job and one that I quite enjoy.
It is fair to say that in my twenty-two years in Parliament I have attended hundreds of these ceremonies. Out of all of them, there is one which sticks in my mind as both the strangest and also among the most important.
In 2008, in the tiny Pacific nation of Kiribati, I formally opened a girl’s toilet at a school.
Continue reading "And a very happy World Toilet Day to you all" »
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Daniel says:
I find it funny a politician talking about world toilet day. I think it is a prime oporunity for politiicians to lift their game and get themseves out of the toilet when it comes to creaming the tax payers of Australia. Read more »
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Don Clark says:
Perhaps because they’re so damned poor, they’d have trouble finding the tin for the walls. The Kiribatis have almost nothing but fish and copra in their island paradise, since the phosphate ran out 30 yrs ago. They have no infrastructure or industry to speak of. Their per capita annual income… Read more »
The propensity for us ascribe days to inanimate objects seems endless. Some of the more obscure that we’ve encountered recently include ‘Picnic Day’, ‘World TV Day’ (which coincidentally shares a day with ‘World Hello Day’, one promoting socialising and one well…not), ‘Lefthanders Day’ and everybody’s favourite, ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day’.
So it would not be out of the question to, upon hearing the words ‘World Toilet Day’, shake your head, perhaps laugh, and turn the page, or click the link for Laser Hair Solutions in the right side panel (because this site appreciates the plight of the left hander when designing web content).
All jokes aside, World Toilet Day is an internationally recognised and significant promoting a critical issue for 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty. It is the lack of safe toilets. We know the solution and we have the technology to simply, effectively and practically make a difference, all we need is the will.
Continue reading "Do you give a crap about World Toilet Day?" »
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MarshaMcclain25 says:
Have no money to buy a house? Do not worry, just because it’s possible to receive the mortgage loans to resolve such problems. Hence take a term loan to buy all you need. Read more »
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Jeremy says:
Eric 5.31, you perpetuate the myth that aid is nothing more than systematic cash transfers from one government to another (Dambisa Moyo, in her much publicised - and overrated in my view - book “Dead Aid” suggests this). This may have been the case a couple of decades back, but… Read more »
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