Opinion
Hold the line, waiting game is hurting all of us
Malcolm Knox
Journalist, author and columnistMy Anzac Day weekend? Seven hours in a hospital emergency ward waiting room witnessing the immediate and visible effect of COVID-19, staff shortages and long-term de-funding. You’re not called “patient” for nothing, but at least in this case the person you are waiting to see might be busy saving someone’s life.
It could have been worse. We could have been going on holidays, losing those seven hours trying to get through an airport. We could have lost them at home on the phone, dying the slow death of a typical service call to Telstra, Qantas or [insert company or government department name here]. We could have lost those hours in a store, at the football, at the Easter Show, in any of the places where waiting in queues has become a built-in fact of Australian life.
Thousands of people queued for hours waiting to check in at Sydney Airport during the April school holidays.Credit:Renee Nowytarger
Were it a school day and I, a student, I might have been among the thousands forced to wait in corridors while yet another period is frittered away, unattended by a teacher, due to the structural mismanagement of public education. Being in a hospital is probably the least aggravating of all the ways in which you can lose those hours of your life that you’ll never get back.
The boom in long-haul waiting is mostly blamed on COVID-19 and its paralysing impact on staffing in the private and public sectors. The pandemic is, however, only the proximate cause. Behind it lie factors such as a tight labour market, suppressed wages growth, low immigration, poor preparation (the pandemic has been with us for how many years?) and, you can’t help suspecting, a deep-seated disrespect for the value of the time that ordinary people, who are doing the waiting, have lost.
The devaluation of your time is a little-measured marker of economic inequality. First World problem? Travel to any Third World country and it’s not long before you see how fundamental this devaluation can be in less privileged places. It might be people having to walk hours for water; it might be the same kinds of queues (at banks and shops, on the phone, at hospitals and transport hubs) that we have in Australia, only 10 times longer and with less hope of satisfaction at the end. One of the privileges of those who live in the developed world is that the statement “Your time is important to us” is occasionally true. But it’s not a First World problem; it’s a Third World problem that is encroaching on First World life.
Institutionalised time-loss exacerbates inequality. The United States has what is essentially a FastPass economy; just like at Disneyland, if you have the wealth and the inside track, you can buy your way to the head of any line for any service. In our airports, this is called first or business class, but variations exist throughout the customer service industry.
The more that waiting becomes a part of our lives, the more agitated we grow about it, the
sooner companies (and this is one thing they are quick to do) will offer to sell us a FastPass,
adding a profitable solution to a problem of their creation.
Whether angry or resigned, whether throwing tantrums or coping Zen-style, more Australians are intolerant of having their time stolen and conscious of a decline in their quality of life. Add up the hours of fruitless waiting across an 80-year lifespan and you hope it only comes to months, but suspect it has ticked over into the years.
My quality of life is lessened by how long I am being forced to do nothing, waiting for hours to achieve, all too often, more nothing.
During an election campaign, the mind wanders: could a party, or more likely an independent candidate, campaign on a policy of cutting waiting times? A massive productivity drive to change society, guided by how important your time is? Mandates enforceable through the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission? A bill of rights that gives your years on earth a value? Fines for banks that put you on hold for hours and then cut you off?
It seems nutty enough to appear on a United Australia Party advertisement. But it would actually be quite interesting, and not just because everyone – everyone – would vote for it. It starts as a local, self-centred issue: my quality of life is lessened by how long I am being forced to do nothing, waiting for hours to achieve, all too often, more nothing. But it ramifies out to some of the key structural issues confronting Australia’s economy and society. The low unemployment rate, one of the federal government’s last credible claims to deserving re-election, equals the tight labour market that produces chronic understaffing.
So is minimal unemployment necessarily a good thing, or should we be talking about falling
participation rates in the workforce, aggravated by pandemic-induced cuts to immigration
and social issues such as the endless waiting times for mental health care that keep people
out of work? Suppressed wage growth means it’s harder for companies to fill customer
service jobs. But if wages were allowed to grow, and services were improved in health and
education, what would that do to an already resurgent inflation rate? These are all chewy
questions that can’t be answered in a sound bite.
Queuing times could be the type of election issue that would plug daily life into many of the big federal-level policy questions that we should be voting on. Instead, something quite different is happening. The parties and their leaders lack the language to link our micro issues with their macro ones. The cynical trotting out of empty promises, the tired and tedious daily grind of seeking some trivial wedge issue, the formula of the campaign, has long lost its connection to voters. While we wait on the phone, they go through the motions.
And it’s probably too much to expect a political leader, who can’t remember the last time they lost a day in a queue, to identify what a relevant concern this is and imagine how they could speak to it.
We’re even going to have to wait interminably in line to vote them out (or not). At least the Australian Electoral Commission is on the job. My 81-year-old mother, who was the unfortunate patient with me in that emergency ward, needn’t go through it all again on election day. She can vote early and cut her wait times. And this FastPass won’t cost us a thing.
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