Handy Man 1

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Four weeks into it and being a handyman in Sydney is taking me to amazing places. On week one, I was schmoozing with the guns of the Australia Rugby Union. Week two saw me sharing the halls with John Howard who, before a stunning election defeat on Nov. 24th, was Australia’s Prime Minister for the last 11 years. Then in week three I spent time with Juan Mann, better known worldwide as the Free Hug Guy and whose You Tube video has become an internet sensation. Week four was relatively sedate, but still found me enjoying lunch amid the sand and surf of Coogee beach. In short, life is rather spectacular.

To be fair though, I didn’t officially meet Mr. Howard. He was in his district office, in a building owned by Gazcorp, and I was there to change out the hand towel dispensers. I caught on that the PM was ‘in’ when Neil and I walked past his limo and the two Australian Federal Police escorts. Technically it was Neil’s job because in his capacity as a Hire-A-Hubby franchisee, he does some of the maintenance on the building. But there we were, just the same, carrying pointy screwguns, razor sharp chisels, utility knives and who knows what other dangerous items onto the elevator and emerging on the PMs floor. And then just as we were sorting out the job, there was Johnny himself in the hallway, heading for the loo between media interviews.

Rushed as he was, he gave us a “G’day fellas” on the way to relieve himself. Which is amazing, really, as I think about it. Not the relieving part, I’m sure John puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us, but that I was ten feet away from him loaded down with sharp metal objects and I hadn’t been searched, questioned, passed through a metal detector, asked for ID or even signed in.

Imagine that happening in the modern American police state.

Alas, access or not, I’ll never meet John in his capacity as Prime Minister. He just lost a six-week election campaign to the soft-boiled Kevin Rudd who walked away with victory by a wide-margin. Much of the campaign turned on climate change (Rudd’s new government just ratified Kyoto) and Howard’s industrial relations policy ‘reform’ called “Work Choices” that seemed to follow the Bush Administration’s PR strategy of Name-It-What-It-Isn’t. Essentially, it allowed potential employees to negotiate their own employment contracts one-on-one. Australia has a firm foot in the labor tradition and unions hold a much stronger position than similar American organizations. People here still expect to work for one company for life, to receive a viable pension and put up for decades with a unfulfilling job. But just like the US, Australian companies find it hard to “reallocate personnel” so they are loathe to hire new workers. Obviously, the labor policy frightened many voters and helped propel Rudd’s Labor Party, with its promise to repeal the law, into power.

Kevin has his work cut out for him. Although a resources boom has lifted Australia’s economy to one of the world’s strongest of late,* no one expects the trend to last and Rudd is trying to use the good times to transition workers from the industrial to the information age. He’s promised to get more computers for kids and expand broadband access nationwide. I was surprised when broadband policy actually became a campaign issue. In part, that’s because Australia’s internet access is a joke for a first world nation. In Sydney’s suburbs like mine, just a few miles from center city, internet café’s are rare and wireless hotspots are even harder to find. Among six million people, I find internet at the public library, just like I did four years ago in Byron Bay. Prime Minister-elect Rudd is a fluent Mandarin speaker, perhaps he will help the nation’s largest city resemble those in China by making cheap internet access widely available. But a partially state-owned phone utility isn’t helping. Telstra charges uses on the amount of information that they download, kind of like water use. Perhaps the company is hindered by all those protectionist policies that create workers who aren’t terribly motivated to serve customers much less foster new business.

Such seemingly ‘backwardness’ has it’s advantages, though. One of which is a refreshing openness that allows tradesmen bearing sharp objects within a long lunge of a PM.

And all that is a long way to explain that I am what is called a ‘sole trader.’ Independent single-person businesses like Hire-A-Hubby are spreading. (www.hireahubby.com.au) Employees are too much of a burden so in my niches of home repair and yoga teaching, pretty much everyone is an independent contractor.

In my handyman capacity, I’ve been graced. Shortly after I got to Sydney, I called the Hire-A-Hubby 800 number and the woman put me in touch with Neil Gibbins who lives nearby. Turns out, his number two guy Carlo was just moving back to Queensland and Neil needed a replacement. I gave him a day’s work, we got on and have been working together pretty much full time. Last week, Carlo joined us to help “knock over” a backyard renovation and from his stories I learned that by working with Neil, I’ve not only landed with a hardworking and ‘switched on’ fix it guy, I’ve found one who is courteous, sharp, honest and - most importantly to my checking account - promptly pays his bills. Of course, I’d picked up on most of this, but Carlo re-enforced for me the rarity of this combination.

So in the last weeks, together we have installed new cook tops for little old ladies, hung doors, caulked windows, fixed leaks, laid tile, washed windows, built sheds, excavated shrubbery and painted. I also helped retired men with leaky mailboxes, changed light bulbs and above all, assisted the Prime Minister in drying his hands. Important stuff, here. I think I should have a big H printed on my paint-stained T-shirt.

Neil knows he has a good thing going and he left a phat job in corporate banking to create it. Although he works many 16-hour days, he still goes to all his kid’s school functions. From what I’ve seen, he makes good money and the work is always varied and interesting. He’s also reshaping the definition of handyman from the realm of sloppy bottom-feeder to one who offers one-stop home maintenance for busy people. In addition to knowing how to fix or build nearly anything, he designs, bids and quotes, three other skills I am looking forward to cultivating.

“Stick with me,” Neal told me a few days after recounting the John Howard story. He was explaining that his great aunt or someone was the hairdresser at the Parliament building in Canberra. “I know everybody.”

Given that he spent a recent evening in the luxury box watching soccer with Telstra’s CEO, I plan to. In all of Sydney, I don’t think I could have found a better mentor.

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(I’m off now to a two week yoga retreat. Another one of the benefits of working independently is being able to take off blocks of time. Till next time, have a great Christmas!)

*Australia’s central bank has increased interest rates six times in the last while. Banks are paying customers like me 7 percent interest on savings accounts. But in a city where starter homes routinely cost a half million dollars (the one I live in is valued at about a million) and nearly every mortgage is on adjustable rates, each interest rate rise sticks the middle class, yet another factor that led to the Howard government’s downfall.

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