Thursday, August 17, 2006

Day14: CentreLink refers DH to Vinnies for food vouchers

DH thinks this can't happen to people like her. But there it is. With Woolworths having lost her pay check, her company's accountant not able to issue a new one till next Tuesday, and her earliest Newstart intake phone appointment on 24th August, she can take cold comfort from charity if she wants to eat. (Oh alright, she can embarass herself and put the hard word on some of her elite friends to shout her a latte.  This is not the Sudan after all)
 
Can you BELIEVE IT???  You can't even get a PHONE appointment with Centrelink for a week!
 
And then you still have to have a further face-to-face interview, god knows when, before the all important concession card arrives in the mail, so that you can at least afford a bus fare.
 
In short, DH can expect to receive her first Newstart pay in approx 2 weeks if she's lucky!  
 
Meanwhile, she can go down to smelly old St Vincent's to be patronised by some gnarled and suspicious dry drunks (unless things have changed since the last time she dropped by) to collect her tins of Tuna, Corn and Beetroot. Anyhow, let's give Vinnies the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they've softened their brand of punitive charity in the past 10 years. DH will keep you informed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh joy. Yes we've got groceries from the Salvos a few weeks ago for all the same reasons. Watch out. There is some sort of Centrelink bullshit about at the moment in which they claim to have called when they haven't. They've done this to my partner twice, me once and another friend of ours too all in the past 6 weeks. Perhaps it's just our area (Melbourne northern suburbs) but then again maybe it's not. The f*ckers got out of paying us for a fortnight with that trick.