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Chequerboard – It’s Amazing What You Can Do With a Pound of Mince (1969)

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Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

A British immigrant couple talk frankly about how they survive on a single basic wage with three children under five and a mountain of hospital bills to pay.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

This young couple arrived in Australia after the husband was demobbed from the air force in the United Kingdom. Soon after arriving, they had three children in close succession with just enough health complications to drop them below the poverty line, especially as they were not eligible for health cover when they first arrived in Australia.

To a contemporary viewer, the interview seems patronising and intrusive although the questions asked were what the program makers thought that sceptical middle-class Australians would want asked. For example, each couple is asked whether they’ve ever been tempted to shoplift. Each is genuinely shocked by the question and it’s to their credit that the interviewees respond with real dignity.

When Chequerboard began, it was conceived as a program of interviews intercut with moments of colour from the interviewees’ lives such as the couples’ interaction with their children. In time, the filmmakers came to realise that the strength of the series was in the ‘colour’. Gradually the interviews were intercut with 'living camera’ sequences showing the daily reality of the subjects’ lives with voice-over from the interview to provide the narrative thread.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This black-and-white clip shows a young British immigrant couple sitting on a sofa, the woman with a baby on her lap, as an off-camera interviewer asks them questions about how their financial difficulties have affected their diet and put pressure on their relationship. As the couple answer questions, the camera shows each of their faces in close-up so that the viewer can observe their reactions and deliberations. While their responses are forthright, the couple appear subdued.

Educational value points

  • In this clip the couple relate their particular hardships and the strains on their relationship to the level of poverty they experience in daily life. The wife describes how she is the one who prepares their very basic meals, manages their limited finances and cares for the children. The husband, who appears resigned to their situation, agrees that he leaves all these matters to his wife. In contrast she describes how she is the one prepared to stand up to the debt collectors.
  • The clip shows the way the Chequerboard series (1969–75) sought to bring to light the lives of individuals and families who had missed out on the benefits of Australia’s growing affluence in the 1960s. Despite an economy growing at 5 per cent, research into living conditions in 1966 Melbourne revealed that around 1 in 16 people was living in poverty. Exposure of this hidden reality contributed to the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty in 1972.
  • Some of the reasons the Chequerboard series was the subject of debate among ABC television viewers are evident here. The extreme close-ups focusing on the faces of subjects as they talked intimately about their lives led to the accusation of intrusiveness. The series was also praised for the way it covered important social issues and allowed ordinary Australians to speak for themselves rather than have experts speak for them.
  • The items on their menu as described by the young couple give some indication of significant changes to Australian eating habits since the late 1960s. The cheaper cuts of meat and plain foods are basic to their diet and the husband disapproves of ‘foreign’ food. Australians were among the biggest meat consumers in the world until the 1980s when health concerns changed the trend. European and Asian migration has also changed eating habits and the range of available foods.
  • The wife talks of having to confront debt collectors, revealing a time when there was little protection from the use of intimidatory tactics that would not be permitted today. Consumer protection laws now protect debtors from debt collection methods that they may perceive as threatening. If the debt collector were to talk to neighbours about the person or family in debt in the way the woman describes in the clip, they would be in breach of privacy laws.

A young husband and wife are sitting on a couch being interviewed. The wife has a baby on her lap.
Wife I couldn’t say when I last had a steak. Usually weekend I buy half a leg of (inaudible) which I make do for two or three meals. Mince steak. Chops are virtually a luxury. It’s amazing what you can do with a pound of mince steak. But we’ve lived virtually on – as I said, half a leg, or we live virtually on stews and stewing steak or sausages occasionally, mince steak.
Interviewer Do you feel this diet ever becomes boring, or do you worry about it?
Wife I get fed up with cooking and then having to eat it. I don’t know whether David finds it monotonous. I try to vary it as much as I can.
David I’m not a fussy eater. But you can spoil yourself with rich foods, I think. Oh, I like just the plain things. I can’t go for your foreign foods, you know, your spaghetti and that. I like, I like just the simple things. Beans on toast.
Interviewer Do you argue much over money?
Wife It’s not the actual money that’s the cause of the argument. Being without it is the root of the argument.
David She ah, she does all all the money thing. But I’ve never really had any interest in the stuff.
Interviewer I sense that a fair bit of the strain, a fair bit of the burden in the family, falls on you. You look after the money, and you physically confront the debt collectors, you physically handle the children. Do you feel the strain is sometimes intolerable?
Wife If I know there’s somebody coming to the door that I can’t afford to pay, well, I could sit here with the windows closed and just have them bang on the door and start making inquiries from the neighbour. Why not just come straight out and say, ‘Your turn next week, mate’? It’s no good trying to hide from reality. You’ve got to face up to it.