In our weekly eNewsletter dated the 21^st of October, we encouraged members to embrace a new mantra for modern times: Buy Local, Eat Local, Stay Local, Event Local and Support Local.

Today we’d like to focus on Support Local.

With one week and one month until Christmas (gasp!) our calendars are filling up, our ‘to do’ lists are getting longer and we’re all looking forward to a festive break. During this busy time it can be easy to overlook the less fortunate in our community. Thankfully we have some wonderful organisations in our community and amongst our membership that are there to assist the vulnerable people in our community.

Would you or your business like to support local at this time of year? There are a number of ways we can suggest:

• St. Vincent de Paul Society are running their annual Christmas Appeal, where for as little as $40 you can help deliver hope and the Christmas Spirit in the form of nourishing meals, hot drinks and snacks via their Soup Vans.
   
• City Mission are also running their annual Christmas Appeal, where your donation will help provide meals, grocery supplies, food vouchers, clothing and household goods to those in need. It also assists with purchasing Christmas gifts for families.
   
• The Examiner has launched their 113^th Empty Stocking Appeal to raise funds for those in need via their charity partners – the Benevolent Society, the Salvation Army, City Mission and St Vincent de Paul. All funds raised are passed on to these organisations and as it says in the launch article; …every cent makes a difference to someone’s life. It can be the difference between a smile or a tear for someone this December.
   
• The Launceston City Community Christmas, a city-wide Christmas lunch event hosted by a number of community organisations in partnership with the City of Launceston are seeking donations and volunteers. The Launceston City Community Christmas provides families and individuals with the opportunity to connect, provide encouragement and build community at Christmas. Last year saw approximately 250 seats filled with people who may have had a much lonelier Christmas.
   
• Another opportunity to support local, that’s very close to our hearts, would be to support the David Peach Fund. The David Peach Fund is part of the Men’s Table charity, a charity that creates a unique environment for men to share openly about their lives, their challenges, their highs and lows with a group of men who they learn to trust and accept.

Please consider supporting local this festive season.

It’s official. After a mammoth effort by Launceston Gastronomy and the Creative Cities Steering Group, Launceston has successfully bid to be designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. Launceston will be one of 49 cities joining the global network. This is a pivotal moment for Launceston and a significant step up to the plate as one of the great regional cities of the world!

In the official media release issued by Launceston Gastronomy yesterday, Mayor Albert van Zetten said the project would cement Launceston’s identity as an internationally recognised region for food and beverage production. “The UNESCO brand is recognised worldwide and is a marker of the very highest quality,” Mayor van Zetten said.

Over many years, Northern Tasmanian has consistently demonstrated expertise in the development of agriculture, food processing, wine and beverage production, tourism and agritourism. Now that we have been recognised and listed as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, it will contribute positively to our regional economy and create new jobs in food-related industries and activities over the coming years. In addition, it formalises Launceston’s identity as one of the world’s great regional food cities.

The media release also stated that The City of Launceston will contribute $25,000 towards the implementation of Creative Cities related projects. Six other Northern councils have also collectively committed more than $28,000, including Break O’Day, Dorset, George Town, Meander Valley, Northern Midlands and West Tamar.

The Chamber is and has been a strong supporter of the UNESCO Creative Cities bid for a number of reasons:

• It helps connect Northern Tasmania to the world via food.
• It places Launceston as one of the great regional food cities of the world.
• It provides a platform for food sustainability in a mixed agricultural and urban context.
• It creates an interplay between local agriculture in our Tamar Valley backyard; Agriscience that combines the best of agriculture teamed up with start-up and established technologists, hospitality that thrives with the abundance of local produce and destination tourism that underpins a vibrant visitor economy – all hallmarks of a growing and thriving city.

Launceston Gastronomy Chair (and Chamber President), Andrew Pitt, said of the announcement; City of Gastronomy status will become what Launceston and Northern Tasmania is recognised for nationally and globally. For some time, we have been lacking a cohesive, accessible and intuitive identity for our city. Now we have one. The activities and projects that underpin the bid will de-silo our food system from paddock to plate, adding value, providing jobs and careers, improving social outcomes, and helping to implement the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. It’s all about local action with global collaboration.

We at the Chamber wish to congratulate Launceston Gastronomy and the Creative Cities Steering Group and we can’t wait to see what happens next. Depending on when you’re reading this, please raise your glass (or other drinking vessel) and join us as we toast Launceston, international city of Gastronomy!

In a March 2020 Facebook post, we shared the image below with these words:

In 1939 during the toughest of times, the British government produced a poster to motivate the public. The message was clear; Keep Calm and Carry On. It’s now 2020 and right here in Launceston we’re facing our own tough times. So, with some help from our friends at Think Big Printing and Cityprom we have a message for anyone who isn’t self-isolating. Keep Calm and Spend Local – whether you’re purchasing for yourself or your business, the local choice is the best.

With the sad announcement that the Festivale Organising Committee has been forced to cancel next year’s event (a decision that we, the Chamber, appreciate must have been incredibly difficult), it’s another reminder that COVID-19 is still affecting our events calendar, businesses of all sizes from any sector and our daily lives. With this in mind, we encourage you to:

• Buy Local
  • With Christmas just around the corner, summer holidays and a new calendar year, there will be a great number of opportunities to buy local.
  • Christmas Gifts (and staff appreciation gifts) from local retailers and Gift Vouchers from local stores, cafes and entertainment venues give the gift twice. Buy local.
  • Need new office stationery for the new year? Buy local.
  • Need some new technology for the office? Connect with a local.
  • Business cards need an update? Have them designed locally and think “local print” instead of online print.  
• Eat Local
  • Support our local cafes, bars and restaurants.
  • Remember! Life’s too short for instant coffee.
  • Need a break from cooking? A local venue will provide a much better dining experience than many of the national fast-food chains (the burgers aren’t necessarily better…)
• Stay Local
  • Need some time for yourself? Want to really hit the town and not worry about getting home? Why not treat yourself to an overnight stay in one of our many wonderful accommodation providers?
• Event Local
  • Support as many local events as you can, for example North food festival is on at the moment in venues in and around central Launceston and the Chamber has a number of events planned for the remainder of 2021.
• Support Local
  • Don’t forget Christmas is a difficult time, particularly for those in need. If you’re in the position to, please support one of our local charitable organisations.

In 2020 we all saw how well Launceston supported each other by Keeping Calm and Spending Local, with 2021 coming to a close it’s so important we see that community spirit once again. So, remember the mantra, Buy Local, Eat Local, Stay Local, Event Local and Support Local.

Or… No Jab, No Job Part 2

I don’t know about you, but I barely recognise the Australia we see in the media this week. The anti-vaccination riots in Melbourne, if nothing else, indicate what a divisive and emotive topic mandatory vaccinations in the workplace are, and we’ve seen similar trends in the data collected around that topic from last week’s newsletter. I thought I’d share the results with you. 

We asked three anonymous questions: the first asked the respondent to indicate whether they were an employee or an employer. The second asked ‘do you support mandatory vaccination in the workplace?’ (Yes/No), and the 3^rd simply asked for the reasoning behind that answer. We did not ask for responses on vaccinations efficacy, trial status, or personal liberties.

The results were interesting. In the five days, the survey was open for submissions; 91 respondents provided answers.

The bald numbers show 52% against mandatory vaccination in the workplace and 48% supporting it.

The slightly more nuanced version shows different ratios:

• Employers > 50 employees: 66% Yes, 33% No. (13% of all respondents)
• Employers < 50 employees: 49% Yes, 51% No. (22% of all respondents)
• Employees – Private:             33% Yes, 66% No. (44% of all respondents)
• Employees – Public:               64% Yes, 36% No. (12% of all respondents)
• Employees – Other                64% Yes, 36% No. (9% of all respondents)

Self-categorisation was mandatory, but no proof was required so a respondent could identify as any category. As a result, the result sets may be imperfect.

It gets more interesting when we time sequence the data. Last Thursday we published the newsletter at 2 pm. In the 3 hours to 5 pm the same day, we can pretty reliably match click-through rates from the embedded link in the newsletter to responses received from the survey, suggesting the initial reactions were direct recipients of this newsletter. Asked Friday morning by one of our members how the results were tracking, my email back noted a nearly 90%:10% tilt in favour of mandatory vaccinations. The language used in the “why” responses was straightforward, pragmatic and brief, irrespective of the answer to the question of support either way.

Then things got weird when the Facebook effect cut in.

We’d shared a link to the newsletter on the Chamber’s Facebook page, and it received >400 interactions, (meaning they clicked on the post for more detail). We can’t tell who they were or where they were located. As it’s a public page, interactions could come from literally, anywhere. Analytics data on the Chambers website where the newsletter was linked matched the Facebook interactions, with a sharp lift in the newsletter/blog post readership after the Facebook post was published. On Friday morning, while we’d received zero comments on the Facebook post itself, we received more than 50% of the total survey responses in a  roughly 1.5 hour period between 8:42 am and 10:30 am. Each of them was a ‘no’ response accompanied by impassioned language in the ‘why’ section that was, in a couple of cases, almost essay-like and repeatedly emotion-charged; speaking to issues of human rights, constitutional rights, trial vaccinations, self-autonomy over vaccinations etc. The survey results also capture the internet IP address of the respondents. Using a reverse IP lookup query tool, it was easy to determine that many of the responses came from the mainland and most correlated to Melbourne. (We of course, cannot see individual results, just an approximation of the ISP location.)   My conclusion was that the link to the survey might’ve been shared on a page/site that was anti-vaccination in disposition.  We can’t ignore those responses as they’re perfectly valid, but they do skew the results and affect the relevance of the survey to Launceston based businesses, which was our intent for the survey.

So make of this what you will, but it’s an interesting exercise in survey-making.  What has come out of it, though, are a couple of additional resources worth sharing as this is clearly a contentious subject and is expected to be for some time yet. 

• The Australian government has now (21^st Sept) published a page on vaccinations in the workplace with some valuable Q&A. It’s here: https://bit.ly/3AzJfSv
• The CSIRO has published a science-based report that looks at vaccinations and their efficacy against the Delta Variant. It’s here: https://bit.ly/39rlAYv

We encourage all members to be across this issue armed with facts and information.