The English are experts at rigid queues and queuing.
I found myself earlier this week in a long queue at Brisbane Airport. It was so long that it snaked through all the available chrome pole and black tape queue controllers and had formed several more hairpin bends of its own to the very doors of the terminal.
It was 7.50am. The flight to Canberra was 8.30am. Ahead of me in the queue was a rather fretful English couple who were also on an 8.30am flight – to Alice Springs.
They were watch looking and asked me what time was my flight. Would we make it, they asked.
“No worries,” I said. “The queue moves pretty fast. They’ll clear this lot in no time.”
She replied, “Oh, I hope you’re right. It doesn’t look good to me. But at least we’re moving.”
More bag shuffling and anxious watch looking. We talked about protocols for reusing medical instruments – as you do when you meet a stranger in an airport queue.
Then an announcement. “Would passengers in the queue on the 8.10am Flight 3832 to Rockhampton please move with their luggage directly to Counter 28 and 29.”
A similar announcement for the Perth flight followed. And another for the Bundaberg flight.
In a few minutes we were at the head of the queue.
“That would never happen at Heathrow,’’ she said. “You would just have to miss your flight.”
I had flown in from Papua New Guinea so the incident was another small reminder about how good Australia is. It was the same when I returned from several weeks in Britain earlier in the year. I had experienced a number of maddening little bureaucratic outrages too trivial to outline here, and any number of glum waiters and shop assistants.
It is unfair to compare Australia with Papua New Guinea, but there is nothing like travel in Third World countries (or Britain) to be reminded of how splendidly well off we are.
Things work in Australia. People poke fun at concepts like bench-marking, best practice, total quality control, efficiency dividends and competition policy. But these things have dramatically improved people’s lives in Australia.
We tend to dwell on the stuff-ups and ignore the efficient and the excellent. But examples of the excellent and efficient abound. On Wednesday I posted a camera to be repaired to Sydney. Not express. Just ordinary mail. On Thursday afternoon I got an email from the repairer, acknowledging receipt and setting out (in English, not legalese) the conditions of quotes and repairs.
I doubt if there is a more efficient postal system on earth. Further, the camera repair outfit had obviously devised a very efficient repair-receipt system. There is, as usual, a detested buzz word to descibe this – “customer focused” – but it should not be sneezed at.
While musing on these things, Olympics and bushfire guru Sandy Hollway was giving a speech at Parliament House (another piece of Australian excellence) with a similar theme. He bemoaned what he called the instinct for national belittling – having national pride without national confidence.
Both the Olympics and the bushfire response are examples of Australian excellence.
Most disasters overseas bring their tales of opportunism, exploitation, administrative insensitivity, incompetence and legal quagmires. That is rare in Australia. Darwin was rebuilt. The treatment of bushfire victims has been exemplary. Sure, there have been some hassles over insurance and development approvals but they have been resolved fairly efficiently.
Roads, telecommunications, health and education are very good in Australia. The welfare net and social mobility work better than most places.
Our rock music is good. Can you get much better than Bell Shakespeare? The Symphony orchestras are first rate. Facilities at the ski resorts are way ahead of New Zealand, much of Europe and on par with the US, even though our climate gives us a short season. We have managed our economy pretty well in the past 15 years.
Hollway said that distance from most of the rest of the world made it difficult for Australians to measure themselves on an international scale.
There is probably some truth in that. I’d go further. Perhaps the Australian tendency to say that things are not as good as they should be arises because Australians often compare their situation with a situation elsewhere in Australia. When that happens we are often find ourselves comparing with the best in the world. The ACT has the lowest road death toll in the world. The north coast of NSW has the best climate in the world. Sydney has the best harbour, among other bests. Tasmania has the most dramatic temperate wilderness, Queensland the longest coral reef and so on. AIDS/HIV management; ulcer treatment; burns treatment; astronomical observation; currency production; games and business software; mining exploration and on and on are all done to world’s best practice in Australia.
We set very high standards for ourselves. The fact that we get so close to meeting them so often should be a cause of rejoicing, not self-flagellation.