Old phones that could turn into lifesavers
This week JOHN ANDERSEN delves into a unique idea that has the potential to save countless people from the threat of domestic violence
THAT old mobile phone of yours wasting away in a drawer could be out there working undercover to help save the lives of women and children surviving under roofs where domestic violence is the primary source of terror.
If you are like most people you stick old phones in a drawer or cupboard and forget about them…forever.
Don’t.
There is an estimated five million old, unused phones wasting away amongst socks and jocks and kitchen utensils around Australia that could be helping save the lives of women and children.
I spoke to Ashton Wood this week. He’s a former IT professional and he’s got a great story.
In 2020 he started DV Safe Phone, the ‘DV’ standing for domestic violence.
He is collecting old phones he refurbs and distributes to agencies who get them undercover to women living in violent homes.
These are like ‘burner’ phones we read about in spy thrillers and see on shows like NCIS.
They are secret phones used by women to help them escape violence at home when it becomes life threatening to them or their children.
How it all came about was just one of those things that happen by accident.
Ashton was having a clean-up at his home on the Sunshine Coast on the day of April 2 2020. It was the day the state was thrown into Covid lockdown.
He was left with a lot of gear to get rid of, but couldn’t leave home.
He rang a police officer he knew and asked what he could do with the household items, including two phones, he was throwing out. The officer, once she heard “phones”, said “we need every phone we can get for domestic violence victims”.
That got him started.
So far Ashton has sent 10,000 phones to agencies such as police, hospitals and domestic violence shelters where they have been passed on to women living with violent partners.
This is one business you would like to see go bust due to a lack of demand.
The sad fact is, despite millions of dollars being spent on awareness campaigns, domestic violence is booming.
“In the last month 285 phones have gone out. The demand is growing all the time as we get better known,” Ashton said. “I put out calls on social media and to corporates to donate their own phones. All the phones we get are paired up with new charging cables, a $5 prepaid SIM card and $15 back-up,” he said.
Ashton said abusers are cunning and nearly always put tracking devises on the phones of women they are abusing.
They know where she is and who she is contacting. This is why it is so important for these women to have a phone their abusive partner doesn’t know about. It means abused
This is one business you would like to see go bust due to a lack of demand
women can’t be ‘tracked’. The phone becomes their escape tunnel.
If you’ve got one stashed away in a drawer that will probably never be used, you know what to do, donate it to the cause. The policewoman Ashton spoke to told him there were never enough phones to go around for all of the women living in violent circumstances. Ashton wants to see if it’s worth trying to level that score.
Drop off points for phones in Townsville are Townsville Chrysler on Duckworth Street and TAFE Pimlico. Member for Burdekin Dale is a huge supporter and phones can be dropped off at his office in Ayr. Charters Towers: Robbie Katter’s office. Phones can also be mailed to DV Safe Phone, Box 1440, Mooloolaba 4557.
THE PARCEL THAT NEVER ARRIVED
I GOT scammed for the first time on an online buy a few weeks ago. I’ve been waiting … and waiting for the parcel to arrive, but nope, I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ve been dudded. It was from a site advertising Hoka trail running shoes.
And no, I’m not big noting and making out I’m a trail runner, but I do walk them at record slow speeds. I’m so slow that friends tell me that they quite often have to line me up with a tree trunk to see if I am moving. My son is a trail runner and he had told me over the phone, “dad, get yourself a pair of Hoka’s”. So, following orders, I went online, saw them at a good price and thought, “bargain” and happily filled out the card details. Without knowing it at the time, I’d plunged into the black hole of suckerdom.
Now some crim out there has my money. It’s becoming exhausting, navigating your way around this scam-filled world we now inhabit. I had a text message a few days ago telling me I owed money on a toll. It looked official. I had been through a few tolls in Sydney back in
May and June, but had an E-tag.
This one as asking me very politely to pay up to avoid a penalty. Maybe the E-tag didn’t work on one occasion and I should pay just to be on the safe side? These are the sorts of doubts these sort of bogus messages conjure. I didn’t pay it, but if you lived in one of the capitals it would be so hard to know if you had missed paying a toll.
FARMERS ALSO BEING DUPED
THE farming sector is not immune from scams. Farmers are being duped by cunning scammers advertising machinery. More than $1.2M was lost to farm, business between July 1 and August 31 this year to these hollow advertisements, quite often in rural publications. A few years ago I was contacted by a bloke who had spent $75,000 on an excavator out of Hong Kong. He paid up and it was shipped out in a container.
When it arrived and he opened the container all it contained was a few loose oddbod parts that could have been picked up in a wrecking yard. Of course the villains were in Hong Kong.
They’d cut and run and could not be contacted. The bloke who contacted me had blown $75,000. He wanted to do a story, but when I drove out to meet him he’d changed his mind. He was just too embarrassed and too upset about being swindled. It happens to people all the time.
I read a story last week where a farmer in Western Australia bought livestock online. He checked out the animals online, paid the money and then…nothing. The animals in the photos existed alright, but they weren’t for sale. Pretty clever plan. How to avoid? Don’t pay upfront. Pay on delivery or at pickup. If the machinery or the animals can’t be inspected before the sale is settled, slam the door as fast as you can. Too bad that doesn’t apply to trail runners.
SENATOR DROPS THE BALL
HERE’S one for our northern politicians to get their teeth into. David Pocock was an inspirational rugby player, but as the Independent Senator for the ACT he’s proving to be anti-regional Australia in his policies.
He, along with the Greens, advocates for tax breaks for electric vehicles, but not for hybrids. It’s debatable if EVS will ever take off in regional Australia, given the distances.
About the only people driving EVS through outback Australia right now are people who are writing stories about the experience, usually bad and fraught with anxiety about having enough power left in the batteries to make it to the next charging station 300km away. Mention EVS and people straight away say, “range anxiety”. Hybrids are a different animal.
They run on batteries charged by an internal combustion engine. Compared to cars running solely on internal combustion engines, they use about half the fuel…ergo, they are good for the environment. All the birdies up in the trees, the platypi frolicking in the creeks and the barramundi swimming around Kissing Point, love hybrids because they don’t pollute nearly as much as their gas-guzzling forebears. This begs the question: Why are politicians in regional Australia giving Pocock and Co a free pass on this instead of fighting for their constituents to get a tax break on hybrids? A. Because they are asleep at the wheel.