The internet didn’t exist and the 747 aircraft was still a year off taking its first flight when Beth Franz started volunteering in 1968.
The 87-year-old from Denmark, on WA’s south coast, has notched up 54 years of community service, helping ensure the survival of the local Scouts.
But she knows without more volunteers, the group’s days are numbered.
A life of volunteering
The value of volunteering was ingrained into Ms Franz from birth, with her mother playing an active role in the local Parents and Citizens (P&C) and progress association.
“I’ve grown up with it,” she said.
Ms Franz has been attending the Denmark Scout Hall for decades.(Supplied: Beth Franz)
“It helped others and it gave to other people.”
She remembers introducing her son to Scouts when he was 8.
“I said to the leaders there if you need any help just ask,” she said.
“Two weeks later, I was in uniform.”
Volunteer decline
Widowed at just 46, and with adult kids, Ms Franz has dedicated most of her life to the Denmark Scouts — but the group’s inability to attract new leaders means its future hangs in the balance.
Ms Franz is one of only two leaders in Denmark with a group of about 15 kids.
“I can’t put my finger on why but there is a reason why we’re not getting the volunteers like we used to,” she said.
Ms Franz at a Great Southern Scout Fellowship gathering in 2020.(Supplied: Beth Franz)
It’s a challenge many volunteer groups are facing.
Volunteering WA figures show about 25 per cent of people in the state currently volunteer — a rate which has dropped by 10 per cent since 2020.
Volunteering WA chief executive Tina Williams said extra life pressures were a contributing factor.
“A lot of it comes down to more single-parent households … people not having as much time,” she said.
“I think [there are] more financial pressures … people are actually retiring later or even supporting families.”
She said there were about 150,000 fewer volunteers in WA compared to 2019.
Group’s future uncertain
Ms Franz knows what the trend could mean for Denmark Scouts if the group closes.
“Headquarters come down and they take all the assets,” she said.
Ms Franz has gathered many accolades during her time with Scouts.(ABC Great Southern: Tim Wong-See)
“Scouting is very hard to get going again in those small places.”
She said the lack of leaders meant the group had scaled back recruiting new Scouts.
“You need the leaders to have the children,” she said.
fond memories
Through her service Ms Franz has made life-long friends.
“I’ve just written a letter and sent a crochet blanket to a young lass called Phoebe in Derby who would now be in her 30s,” she said.
“She never comes to Denmark without seeing us.”
Ms Franz says she was raised to appreciate the value of volunteering.(Supplied: Beth Franz)
Ms Franz tears up recalling a recent moment at the local pool when she didn’t have money to pay an entry fee.
“I got a tap on the shoulder, a six-foot-tall young man said to me ‘I’ll pay for her. She was my scout leader for years’,” she said.
“That paid back for everything.”
While Ms Franz acknowledges some people are too busy to volunteer, she remembers encountering similar challenges.
“Unfortunately, we were all very busy as well when we were young,” she said.
And while she doesn’t think younger people need to “toughen up”, Ms Franz did urge them to look at life from a broader perspective and made a compassionate plea for new volunteers to get involved.
From the Dragon Boat Regatta in Broome to the Orange Mardi Gras festival on the other side of the country, community events are being canceled and emergency services are struggling to cope as the number of volunteers plummets.
The trend has triggered soul-searching among community groups and charities — is it a temporary blip linked to the COVID pandemic, or have Australians become more selfish?
“What we’ve seen is a longer-term decline in volunteering rates, and that’s been amplified by the COVID pandemic,” Volunteering Australia CEO Mark Pearce says.
Emergency service crews are staffed mainly by volunteers in many parts of regional Australia.(Supplied)
“There are also changes in how people want to volunteer and participate — there’s increasing demand for flexibility that doesn’t necessarily correlate with the structure of formal volunteering programs.”
The 2021 census data recorded a 19 per cent drop in volunteering since the last snapshot in 2016. The finding is backed up by more regular, in-depth social surveys done by the ABS.
The number of Australians volunteering has reduced significantly in recent years.
The biggest decline has been recorded in the 15-24 year old age group, the same age group posting an increasing number of controversial ‘good deed’ stunts on social media.
The depletion of the volunteer brigade is affecting sports clubs, emergency services and long-established organizations like Rotary and Lions, that help run events and raise funds for local charities.
Country towns suffering
The impact is most noticeable in regional areas, where event organizers and first-responders are more likely to be unpaid.
As a result, some events are being cancelled, such as the annual Dragon Boat Regatta in Broome.
The Dragon Boat Regatta sees dozens of teams race in Broome’s Roebuck Bay.(Supplied: Abby Murray Photography)
It has been a popular fixture in the town for almost 20 years, and raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity. But this year there weren’t enough people to organize or run it.
“The practical impact in regional and remote Australia is that social activities and the cohesion that takes place by community coming together is lost or significantly reduced,” Mr Pearce says.
“And that has implications for the livability of these communities in which people choose to spend their lives.”
The Dragon Boat Regatta is usually organized by the local Rotary chapter, which currently has only a handful of members.
It is hoping to find enough local people to help with the nine-month organizing process to revive the regatta in 2023.
The Drags on Boats team debuted at the 2015 Dragon Boat Regatta, where most ended up in the water.(ABC News: Erin Parke)
Events fighting across the country
Meanwhile in Alice Springs, organizers are struggling to pull together enough volunteers to hold the beloved Henley-on-Todd Regatta, which raises money for local Rotary Club projects.
Every August, teams of people race on the dry Todd River in boats without bottoms in front of a crowd of about 4,000 people.
Secretary Ron Saint said getting the right number of volunteers had been “tenuous.”
“We would like to have 130 but we’ve got about a hundred. So we’re at that point where we’d like to have 12 people doing a certain role but we’ll have nine or eight,” he said.
Organizers are hoping more locals will get involved to ensure the future of the Henley-on-Todd river race.(ABC News: Alexandra Fisher)
“It’s not going to stop the event … but you’d want a few more [people] in case someone can’t make it.”
Mr Saint believed some people who might volunteer were now trying to make up for paid work lost during COVID lockdowns.
“People are time poor and as we try to get the economy kick started again it’s difficult to commit the discretionary time for volunteer work,” he said.
In March, a proposed inaugural Mardi Gras celebration in Orange, in central west New South Wales, was canceled for the third year in a row when the small team of people organizing the Rainbow City Festival event became “exhausted” from repeatedly having to postpone it .
The Rainbow City Festival will focus on providing more smaller-scale events in the future. (ABC News: Kevin Nguyen)
What’s causing the decline?
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that people aged 40 to 54 are most likely to volunteer.
Women and men participate at a similar rate, with the greatest number of people volunteering with sporting clubs and religious groups.
People living in remote areas are most likely to volunteer, but the rates in regional and urban areas are almost identical.
Social researcher Hugh Mackay has been monitoring Australian attitudes and lifestyle habits for six decades.
“This is a weird period we are in at the moment, that helps explain the decline of volunteering,” he says.
“We’ve been changing in ways that have made us more individualistic, much more concerned about ‘me and my rights and my entitlements and my identity’.
Ever the optimist, social researcher Hugh Mackay sees a silver lining in the COVID cloud.(Supplied)
“And that’s all working against our natural proclivities to be kind and compassionate and cooperative and help each other out.
“But it’s also worth noting that organizations that want volunteers have probably not been quite nimble enough, and not understanding all these societal shifts and the changing culture.”
dr mackaysays the main change has been a withdrawal from community involvement.
This has been caused by an increase in the use of social media to stay “connected’; people living alone; and the trend for having fewer children, resulting in fewer opportunities to develop local friendships through schools and kids’ sporting clubs.
“We’ve also become too ‘busy’, and being ‘busy’ is a kind of hiding place, a barrier between us and others,” he says.
“It’s the enemy of social cohesion and the enemy of volunteering, because as long as we can convince ourselves we’re too busy to help other people, we can get away with it – we have made being busy a virtue.”
Are young people the problem?
Dr Mackay rejects the notion that young people are too selfish to volunteer, saying a more nuanced shift has occurred.
“Millennials have grown up with a deep sense of impermanence and have adopted a mantra of ‘let’s keep our options open’,” he says.
Every year dozens of volunteers are needed to be the ‘legs’ of Sammy the Dragon, as part of Broome’s Shinju Matsuri.(Supplied: Abby Murray Photography)
“Committing to anything long-term runs against the ethos of this generation, so they will be happy to help out, but reluctant to join up to anything that requires a weekly meeting or a long-term program.
“One of the favorite occupations of older people through history has been to bash younger people and complain about them.
“But it’s worth remembering that the rise of individualism is not a generational phenomenon, it’s happening right across the age ranges.”
All at sea as volunteers jump ship
Some organizations are adapting by asking people to help out with one-off events, or ramping up social media recruitment campaigns.
But sometimes the challenge is retaining the volunteer recruits who do sign up.
In the waters off Broome, it is a matter of life or death — every few weeks the volunteer Sea Rescue team is called out to save a sinking or stranded vessel.
Volunteer skipper Gareth Owen briefs crew on a planned training exercise.(ABC News: Erin Parke)
Skipper Gareth Owen says cyclones, crocodiles and big tides make it a hazardous job.
“It’s vital we’re able to crew the vessel, because the calls can come at any time,” he says.
“It’s always very close as to whether we have enough people.
“It’s a major problem, because we’re low on numbers and the commitment to training is quite high, so it can be difficult to maintain people’s enthusiasm.”
Mr Owen, who originally signed up to learn marine skills with his young sons, says he’s not surprised the latest census data shows a drop in volunteer numbers.
“I think we’ve seen over the past few years that some people have become a bit more self-centered and they don’t go out as much because of COVID,” he says.
“So I guess a lot of people have prioritized families, and that has put pressure on volunteer groups like us.”
Annie Stephenson has been volunteering with the group for two years, and coordinates recruitment.
Annie Stephenson says she benefited from volunteer organizations as a child, so is keen to contribute.(ABC News: Erin Parke )
Ms Stephenson says a recent advertising campaign attracted more than 20 people, but the numbers dropped away as they realized the commitment involved.
“It’s one thing to recruit people, but retaining them can be hard,” she says.
“Because there’s so much training involved, we’re looking for people who can commit for two years minimum, but people’s circumstances change, they’ll get a new job or have family commitments, which is totally understandable.
“The key thing for us is to have a big enough pool of qualified crew to share the load and fatigue management, and to make sure people don’t get burned out.”
One of the new recruits is 18-year-old Byron Schaffer.
He says he doesn’t know many people his age who volunteer regularly.
Byron Schaffer (left) is training as a Sea Rescue volunteer in Broome.(ABC News: Erin Parke)
“I think some teenagers see it as something that ‘adults’ do, people who are a bit more settled down,” he says.
“I really enjoy it, it’s something to do in your free time that makes you feel good.”
What does the future hold?
Volunteering Australia says there has been a small increase in participation rates this year, following the easing of COVID restrictions.
But they are still well short of the volunteer numbers of five years ago.
Volunteer skipper Gareth Owen hopes recent natural disasters might prompt Australians to sign up and offer their time and expertise.
Thousands of Australians volunteered during recent bushfires and floods.(Supplied: Queensland Department of Community Safety )
“With the floods and the firefighters you see so many awesome volunteers doing things, and I think people forget they are volunteers because they’re doing such an excellent job and they’re at it for so long,” he says.
“Sometimes people might think it’s part of the service we get for being Australian, and not realize we need to put our hand up and look out for each other by volunteering.”
Dr Mackay, now aged 83, remains optimistic.
“I think this rise of individualism marks a really weird, aberrant period in human history, and it’s not actually who we are,” he reflects.
“I think our true nature as communitarians, cooperators, and kind and compassionate people who look out for each other will re-emerge.”
“The pendulum is going to swing back, I am sure of it.”
A bill to restore territory rights has passed in the House of Representatives this morning, edging the ACT and Northern Territory closer to being able to set their own laws on voluntary assisted dying.
Key points:
The House of Representatives has passed legislation repealing a ban on the territories introducing euthanasia laws
If passed in the Senate, the bill will give the territories the right to vote on the issue themselves
The ban has been in place for 25 years and makes the ACT and NT the only Australian jurisdictions to not allow voluntary assisted dying
The private member’s bill was introduced by Labor MPs Alicia Payne and Luke Gosling on Monday and aims to overturn a 25-year-old ban on territories legislating on euthanasia.
This bill does not legalize voluntary assisted dying, but rather gives the territories the right to vote on it.
It will still have to undergo a vote in the Senate, where leading opponents of assisted dying blocked previous attempts to repeal the ban. Two of those opponents – former Liberal senators Eric Abetz and Zed Seselja – no longer hold Senate seats.
If passed, the bill would give the opportunity for the territories to follow every state in Australia and allow voluntary assisted dying, after NSW became the last of the states to pass its legislation on the issue in May.
The bill was passed 99 to 37 in the House of Representatives.(ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
Advocates have been campaigning for change for decades
Advocates for voluntary assisted dying laws have been campaigning for the territories to be able to set their own laws on the issue for decades.
Between 2006 and 2016, multiple bills were introduced to federal parliament seeking to restore territory rights, but each failed.
Among those in support of the legislation is Darwin resident Judy Dent, whose husband Bob was the first to make use of the NT’s voluntary euthanasia law before it was repealed when the ban on territories legalizing assisted dying was introduced.
Bob Dent was the first of four people to use the NT’s short-lived assisted suicide laws.(Supplied)
Mr Dent died on September 22, 1996, but the law’s reversal has been a source of pain for his widow ever since.
“Surely it is unconstitutional to treat people differently because of where they choose to live,” Ms Dent said last year.
“That’s what they’re doing — they’re making the people of the territories second-class citizens.”
In March last year, both the ACT and NT wrote to senior Commonwealth ministers asking for the ban to be appealed, but in October, the request was denied by then attorney-general Michaelia Cash.
But the issue was revived ahead of the federal election, when now Independent Senator David Pocock made it one of the major issues of his campaign.
“Tragically, for some in our community, this is not a debate that can wait,” Senator Pocock said at the time.
Yesterday, in his maiden speech to the Senate, he said whether the ACT allowed for voluntary assisted dying should be a decision by the Legislative Assembly.
“It is time for us to restore the right of the territories to make decisions for themselves. To ensure that our Legislative Assembly here in the ACT gets to make decisions about the future of Canberrans, not MPs from around the country whose own constituents already enjoy these same rights,” Senator Pocock said.
‘Incredibly special moment’
Ms Payne said it was an “incredibly special moment” when the bill passed in the lower house.
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“I’m very, very grateful to each of our parliamentary colleagues across political lines who support the rights of the territories to have the same democratic rights as other Australians,” she said.
“We’re only halfway there, the conversation needs to continue now in the Senate and those discussions with our colleagues are continuing.
“I put that plea now to our Senate colleagues to please do this for our constituents, to have their say.
“I am grateful to those colleagues who don’t personally support voluntary assisted dying but do support our equal democratic rights.”
Mr Gosling said he and Ms Payne were “very proud” to see the bill go through, with an overwhelming majority of 99 MPs voting in the affirmative.
“We’re grateful for that support,” he said.
“The bill will now go to the Senate and we’re hoping that it receives support there as well, and that’ll mean, for Territorians, that we will regain the ability to make laws on issues that affect us.”
