This tragedy [Black Saturday bushfires] devastated a community that was already recognised by the Victorian Government as disadvantaged with a high proportion of residents in low skilled, low paid work in agriculture and forestry, unemployed or dependent on welfare. (Flowerdale Community House Incorporated Jobs Fund Grant Submission, 2009, page 8)
A variation of this statement, is used, on page 21, where the author(s) of the grant submission state:
Flowerdale was recognised as a disadvantaged community long before the current recession and the Black Saturday bushfires that devastated the area. ... The area is dependent on agriculture and forestry, both of which industries have been hit hard by falling commodity prices. The fires have also damaged these industries with the loss of trees, crops, livestock ... (Flowerdale Community House Incorporated Jobs Fund Grant Submission, 2009)
In order to ascertain whether these statements were based in fact, we chose to spend the evening looking for data related to these statements. This led us on a very interesting journey, leading to one validated data source and, in doing so, posed some questions for consideration ...
Question: What percentage of people, living in the Flowerdale Valley, that is in Flowerdale and Hazeldene, were employed in agriculture ?
Answer: In Hazeldene, it was reported that there was no one working in agriculture, but eleven people were working at the chook farm. In Flowerdale ? Well, the data collected by the 2006 Census indicates that there are not enough people living in Flowerdale to allow for individualised data to be extracted.
Question: What percentage of people, living in the Flowerdale Valley, that is in Flowerdale and Hazeldene, were employed in forestry ?
Answer: In Hazeldene, it was reported that there was no one working in forestry. In Flowerdale ? Once again, Flowerdale is considered to small to allow individualised data to be extracted from the 2006 Census.
Question: What percentage of people, living in the Flowerdale Valley, that is in Flowerdale and Hazeldene, were unemployed ?
Answer: In Hazeldene, it was reported that there were 15 people unemployed and actively looking for work from 366 respondents. In Flowerdale ... can’t say. Flowerdale is considered to be to small to be able to extract meaningful data from the 2006 Census.
Question: What percentage of people, living in the Flowerdale Valley, that is in Flowerdale and Hazeldene, were dependent on welfare ?
Answer: There is no specific data with which this can be ascertained for either Hazeldene or Flowerdale ... and we looked.
It must be asked where the data used in this grant submission was obtained.
The Flowerdale Community House Incorporated’s Jobs Fund Grant Submission paints a picture of us as being from low socio-economic status households or on benefits, and looking for employment locally, milking cows, chopping trees down or planting potatoes.
This is so far from the truth.
The 2006 Census reports that over 55% of respondents, from the Hazeldene community, were employed either in manufacturing, construction, education and training, or retail, whilst the remaining 45% were employed in other areas, and that 36.4% of respondents completed some form of tertiary education, from trade qualifications through to Postgraduate Degrees. To us, this does not indicate that Hazeldene is a community waiting to be employed in the industries identified in the Grant Submission.
Oh, and in our travels, we found evidence of Hazeldene being categorised as a "large town". Unfortunately, we could not find evidence of Flowerdale being recognised or categorised as anything other than a locality ... but we'll leave this for another day ... Maybe it would form the basis of a worthwhile editorial on the "one town, one postcode" issue ? After all ...
