Election's over: Back on your heads!

Before the election, carrying water, hewing wood

After the election, carrying water, hewing wood

(Old Buddhist Saying)

Party's over. Back to reality. In the case of DH and her neighbours, this means

• Having been foolhardy enough to ignore DOH and Centrelink's inbuilt Disincentives to Work and Education by getting a higher education, having more takehome pay for working 21 hours a week than for working 28 (thanks to escalating HECS, SPSS and DOH rent)
  
• Giving up fulltime work because despite earning over a $1000 a week with the above disincentives, plus the additional costs of unsubsidised medication and transport, she is only a few dollars better off than on the pension, while her health suffers from the added stress, the time poverty, the chaotic life of being a carer, trying to keep a household running with no money for repairs or refurbishing.
  
• Looking forward to a summer in a house designed by an idiot. With the house facing west with 70% of the western wall made of glass, no insulation in the roof, no eaves to protect against the sun, windows that open outward at a slight angle and allow no air to circulate so the house cannot cool down, with her daughter's brains frying in the eastern bedroom in the morning, and the main western bedroom unlivable in the afternoon, and the room not cooling till about 5 in the morning. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. No rest in this house over the Christmas break.
  
• DH's entire block of 8 houses put in an application to DOH at the beginning of the year to get some heat relief measures put in place. Despite calling half a dozen times, as is the case with DOH's own Siberia, the Broadway DOH, (see Bermuda triangle over Broadway) messages get lost, never to be seen again. There has been no response so far.
  
• Elsewhere in the more crumbling regions of DH's precinct, elderly residents complain of being terrorised by the increasingly targetted population of mentally ill men, drug addicts and criminals. While DOH and other government departments are having a great time signing of high level agreements on mental health supports and bristle with acronyms HASIs and JGOS come and go while nothing happens on the ground