Keneally and Abbott: Wind-up puppet and overwound monkey

Wouldn't be much of a diary if there was no entry marking the dispiriting elevation of a wind-up puppet and an overwound monkey to amongst the highest offices in the nation. But the lack of talent and absence of principle from people who should be leaders is all too heartsickening for further comment.

Labor's peculiar notion of justice

Labor has come up with a brilliant and logically incontrovertible new philosophical proposition:

To make an unjust system more just, simply
extend injustice equally to all

... starting with the lower classes or course.
The rich will just have to wait their turn ...

Corollaries:

• Rent at 30% or more creates housing stress and its attendant evils: depression, debilitation, family breakdown,
  
  Therefore to make social housing fairer, public housing tenants on a wage must as soon as possible have their rent upped to 30% + to be on a par with the unfortunates in private housing
  
  
  
• It's racist to humiliate Aboriginals as a class by compulsory income management.
  
  So let's humiliate the Unemployed classes as well. Then it won't be racist anymore.
  
  In the fullness of time, of course, Labor will extend this principal to all Australians. For example, it will be a requirement that half of banking executives salaries are to be paid in the form of Coles vouchers. But Rome wasn't built in a day, so the working class should be patient.
  
  
  
  

How much lower can Labor go in its treatment of unemployed Australians?

So now unemployed people are to be further humiliated with the "Basics card"? And by Labor!

Bloody hell!

DH's blood is boiling right now, and here is why.

She has been unemployed now since May 2008. And it's not for want of trying. She has applied for hundreds of jobs and been knocked back. And remember that every job app these days requires a complete reconfiguring of the hapless jobseeker's resume, not to mention that it takes a day to answer the host of "selection criteria" which DH reckons are designed to weed out sweet, hardworking modest Cordelias like herself from the shamelessly self-aggrandising Gonerils and Regans of this world.

Now DH has two post-graduate qualifications, a Cert IV in training and assessment, a long list of published articles, and a heap of experience in project management, publishing, admin, office management, programming and analysis, IT, technical writing, communications, mostly in non-profits, and government

And DH has given back heaps to the community, on P&C executives, on HNSW committees, on disability support groups and local community groups.

So how come she can't get a job?

Simple: she

• is over 50
• has a patchy work record having been a carer for a disabled child
• took a gamble and decided to target contract work with the NSW government in the hope that it would eventually pay off as a permanent placement. But then the State Govt employment freeze happened. (And there's a whole article on her friends in the public service who are being expected to do more and more on less and less as colleagues are not replaced when they leave).
  

As a result, DH has a patchwork resume, which she thinks demonstrates her initiative and adaptability, but employers don't see it that away. Every job she applies for ends up being offered to people who've been doing the exact same job for 5 years.

Anyhow, the good news is, she has finally got a job, starting soon.

But not soon enough to over-ride the bitterness of a year and a half living off $135 a week after rent. And she's one of the lucky ones living in cheap public housing. Her heart bleeds for other Australians who don't have this. How on earth are they surviving?

And just what does the Labor Party expect its traditional supporters, the working class, to spend that $135 on if it's not food and electricity? The basics card is to be spend on clothes??? Who has money left over out of $135 to buy clothes??? And what about telecommunications. Aren't a phone, mobile, and internet access and computer consumables absolute necessities these days? And what about things like annual membership fees, repairs, medical bills, dental work, medications, insurance, and yes, cosmetics. How are you gonna get a job with teeth missing and no lipstick?

And won't we be allowed to pay for the occasional outing? We can't all get an invite to the Lord Mayor's picnic as our one outing of the year for Chrissake!!!

DH, btw, is always well dressed, so if you know her, and thinks she's lying about how hard up she has been, here's how she does it: She bloody well had to cash out half her super, which was minuscule in the first place (she was a carer, remember) and now there's practically nothing left.

Bloody hell.

DH, btw, resigned from the ALP just before the local council elections this year. She figured she was already part of one one despised minority as a houso. She couldn't bear the approbrium of being associated with another as an ALP branch member.

But maybe it's time to rejoin the party as the Ghost of Pre-selectors Past to haunt Tanya and Verity.

Confession

If you're wondering why DH has been silent lately, it's because she spends most of her waking hours job hunting, doing courses and volunteering in various housing, disability and local community activities. Being a member of various HNSW committees, DH has found it pretty damn hard to be an independant critic when HNSW staff are so intelligent, nice and well-meaning, and work so hard on so many carefully-thought out policies.

It seems churlish then to complain when innovations don't translate effectively down to the local level. Of course it takes years to develop and implement policies, so being a considerate old houso, DH has been practicing patience, and a wait-and-see attitude.

(Though oddly enough, the ham-fisted "Tenant Fraud Amendment" and the "Ferguson" amendment were brought in practically overnight... But that's NSW Labor's fault ... )

The upshot is that over the years, this diary has gone soft on HNSW. If there is anyone to blame, it goes back to lack of commitment from the state government, especially the terrible right wing ministerial trio of Tripodi, Cherie Burton, and Matt Brown, to abuse and neglect from the Howard Government, (may there memory be blotted out), and sadly, a lack of cohesion, organisation and leadership from amongst tenants.

Nicholas Cowdery slams Rees government on Ferguson amendment

Nicholas Cowdery, the NSW Director Public Prosecutions, has criticised the Rees Labor Government's amendment to the Housing Act for the sole purpose of evicting Dennis Ferguson from public housing.

Addressing Politics in the Pub last Friday on the topic of "Police Powers Out of Control", Mr Cowdery decried what he called "an appeal to populism" and "quick political point-scoring by appealing to the lowest common denominator" in "the mindless belief that this will solve social problems".

Mr Cowdery reminded the audience of a history of similar single-target populist attempts by NSW Labor, including the legislation to extend the detention of Gregory Wayne Kable, later struck down by the High Court, and the more recent Bikie Legislation.

Mr Cowdery called for a national charter of human rights to counter short-sighted government erosion of civil rights.

OK, enough with this desperate attempt to sound like a cadet reporter with the SMH, and back to DH-ese.

What most shocked DH in Mr Cowdery's presentation was his revelation on the legislative precursor to Hitler's horrific "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". HItler's justification for his anti-jewish legislation was that he was forced to apply a legislative solution to hose down vigilantism in the community provoked by the presence of Jews, failing which, "a final solution" would need to be applied. Now there's a slippery legislative slope to hell!

Maybe those young whippersnappers, Nathan Rees and David Borger, (purportedly Leftists yet!!!) should learn some history! Generation X politicians are such a disappointment to DH. They seem to have entirely forgotten the terrible history of the early 20th century...

Why are they allowing the Daily Telegraph to dictate legislation?

All these pieces of legislation have achieved bugger-all beyond eroding the civil liberties of future generations. Makes yer heart bleed, dunnit?!

Gittins' slur on age pensioners in public housing

[DH posted the following foaming diatribe to the SMH in response to a remarkably badly pitched and divisive article by Ross Gittins, Jobless fall by the wayside in crusade to harness grey power. Gittins intention was admirable enough. He wanted to lambast Federal Labor for its crocodile tears at the $7.50 rent hike imposed by NSW Labor on the $30 aged pension increase. He was quite right to denounce Jenny Macklin's arrant populism and hypocrisy, when Federal Labor has thrown unemployed people to the wolves. But was it really necessary to paint aged pensioners, especially those silvertail pensioners who live in public housing (!) as greedy and powerful, and add more fuel to populist flames?]

DH wrote (and has now polished):

Normally I'm an admirer of yours, Ross, but how on earth did you become a mouthpiece for the "divide and rule" game, especially when you're not even a member of the ruling class? Why are you sooling the lowest classes, read, the welfare class, to fight amongst themselves like so many desperate gladiators, while the truly wealthy get off scot free?

It's not the greed of pensioners that keeps Newstart at its outrageously low level. $30 is still a pittance. If you must point the finger at the parasites that are fleecing this country, couldn't you start with a plumper, more juicy bunch of bandidos, like bankers or real estate agents or land speculators or something?

You've got a point about Federal Labor though. I'm not an aged pensioner, by the way, but stuck on a barely subsistence level of Newstart, despite being highly qualified and applying for hundreds of jobs, and absolutely outraged at being abandoned by the likes of my local member, Tanya Plibersek, who I used to think so highly of, and whose election I worked towards. Now call this a cliche, but still I'd like to see my former heroine try to live off $130 a week. Not that I don't like Tanya personally, but the class struggle is the class struggle, and we're no longer on the same side.

Going after politicians is fair game, but you won't hear me begrudging pensioners their lousy $30 a week, or pitting those "silvertails" who you reckon live in public housing against the poor beggars living in private rental. It's not housos who caused their plight but greedy speculators and gutless governments who didn't and won't legislate to protect Australian citizen's right to decent, secure and affordable rental housing.

Relocating tenants for populist purposes

"Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY"

Benjamin Franklin would have a fit if he was living in Australia.

Short-sighted populism again from hair-trigger jumpy NSW Labor, perfected by Bob Carr, chip chip chipping away at our essential liberties. (As a perfect example, Verity Firth just today dumped Iemma's and Della Bosca's idiot plan to fine and jail parents of truanting kids. A resounding chorus of "we told you so" from welfare and education groups is in order).

Back to Ferguson: couldn't the same result been achieved, without eroding all our civil liberties, by that other all-purpose impost on tenant's security of tenure, the policy of "relocating tenants for management purposes", which states "As a social housing landlord, Housing NSW has the right to ask any tenant to relocate to another suitable property, identified by Housing NSW, that meets their housing needs.", in other words, "anything goes" or rather "anyone goes if HNSW says they go".

Housing peaks comment on Ferguson amendment

Comment on the Housing Amendment (Registrable Persons) Bill 2009

23 September 2009

For further information refer to Shelter NSW or the Tenants' Union of NSW

This is a brief comment on the Housing Amendment (Registrable Persons) Bill 2009 by the Tenants' Union of NSW and Shelter NSW. The Tenants' Union of NSW is the State's peak tenants' organisation and specialist community legal centre for landlord-tenant law. Shelter NSW is the State's peak low-income housing policy organisation.

We object strongly to the Bill.

The Bill would allow the tenancies of a specified category of tenants to be terminated, and for those tenants to be evicted, by agreement of the Police Commissioner and the Director-General of the Department of Human Services.

A tenancy may terminated without notice to the tenant, and with immediate effect. The tenant may be evicted, without notice and immediately, by the police.

The Bill provides no role for the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, or the courts, in the decision to terminate and evict. The Bill expressly prevents any review by the courts of the Commissioner's and the Director-General's decisions.

What the Bill provides for is summary eviction. It should have no place in New South Wales residential tenancies law.

The Bill is unnecessary. The Residential Tenancies Act already includes special provisions that allow Housing NSW to offer a tenant alternative premises and terminate their original tenancy

We believe the safety of children is best ensured by teaching children to recognise and report inappropriate conduct on the part of any adult – whether a family member, friend, neighbour or stranger.

[Note: DH endorses this statement except for the italicised article of faith above. Would that it were so simple!]

The Ferguson amendment

So the ever-reactive NSW Labor government is taking to the Residential Tenancy Act with a shovel at the behest of the mob, who'd cut off their collective legislative nose to spite their neighbour's face.

That said, who wants to have a paedophile, or any crim, for that matter living next door?

Why not some innovative legislation for a change, pairing every crim discovered in public housing, with a crim from the North Shore? Let's demand that a suitable punishment for billionaires who commit tax fraud, money laundering, property theft, or big-time is to be required to billet a low-rent . Maybe even chain 'em together with ankle-braces for public appearances? Maybe one day, if justice is done, we cd even see a former Housing Minister 'tripp'ing along with a small-time stand-over man hobbled to his ankle.

Meanwhile, perhaps a room could be found for Ferguson at the Goanna* mansion?

*Aka the Packer paterfamilias, as described by the Costigan commission into organised crime. The Packer family being DH's favorite candidate for a good mobbing.

Mallard mallets media, mob madness

As Dennis Ferguson gets his own personal piece of legislation, it's worth foregrounding this comment from the ever witty and incisive Garry Mallard, of the National Tenant Support Network. (See it in context below, under the Dennis Ferguson Dilemma)

Garry Mallard writes:

Ferguson is not a "Queensland paedophile" as has been suggested. We are not a nation of closed borders. Nor are we genetically disposed or endemic to any particular state. Ferguson is, if one must apply a label, an Australian paedophile. He is free to live in whatever state/territory he wishes, notwithstanding any travel restrictions that may have been placed upon him as a condition of his parole. Once resident in NSW - and for the purpose of this situation 'resident' can be read as 'present' - he is entitled to apply for public housing in NSW, if he meets the criteria.

The main function of public housing - under current policy - is to house those who, for whatever reason, are unable to find and maintain accommodation in the private sector. Lets see now, a man hunted by media and angry, poorly informed mobs...mobs whose ONLY source of information about Ferguson is the aforementioned and wholly trustworthy media -- a man who has coffins delivered to him and firebombs found in his yard -- a man who "law abiding" citizens have promised to torment, harass and otherwise subject to relentless abuse and attention until they have him out -- a man who, to anyone playing with a full deck of their own, is obviously afflicted with an intellectual disability and mental illness quite distinct from his perverse attraction to children -- a many whom even the Housing Minister and the Premier have sought to see out on his ear...a man who under all these circumstances has absolutely zero chance of finding and maintaining a tenancy in the private sector, and you are thick enough to wonder why he is eligible for public housing?

It's YOU, you and the media with your madness and obsessions, YOU have MADE him the MOST eligible human being in all Christendom! Congratulations, you must feel so proud.

For the record, when he was allocated the home in Ryde it was done in consultation with numerous agencies whose job it was to 'support' him. For support, read "watch" and monitor him. Here's a reality check for the people of Ryde. Until the moment you assembled your mobs and started to complain, you were, on balance of probability, safer from his perversions than any other community in the nation. That's not to say your community was immune from the influence of paedophiles in general - they were doubtless among your mates in the mob. But safe from Ferguson. Why? Ferguson has the highest profile of any criminal in Australia. People are not just watching him, they are actively looking for excuses to put him away again. Let me just point out here, that it's a matter of record that he has been lumbered with a number of charges since his release from prison, all of which he was acquitted of. Sloppy police work no doubt, but I digress... He enjoys a level of infamy not seen for many years and for this reason, should he be driven to offend again, surly he's unlikely to do it on his own doorstep? Isn't it more likely he'll offend somewhere where police won't knock on his door before looking elsewhere? Of course it is! If he is going to offend again, it will be somewhere other than Ryde.

I'm stunned to think that anyone thinks finding digs for him in the boonies, far from schools -- and children for that matter -- offers any sort of security. Do they think him too stupid to buy a train ticket, or board a bus? Has a phobia about public transport and Taxis I've not read about, does he?

If people don't like his ilk, they should lobby for tougher sentencing, or the return of the death penalty -- it matters little which, but it does matter that they should have the courage of their convictions and work to develop social policy to address their concerns. Mobs spoon fed every 'fact' by the least reliable source of information in the cosmos - the media - should not be permitted to engage in this process however, for they have already proven themselves too gullible; too stupid to be trusted with such a weighty responsibility.

Frontline Housing NSW staff pay cut again

While job hunting on SEEK about a week ago, DH noticed that Housing NSW was advertising again for "strong-minded" staff, i.e. counter staff.

But their already miserable hourly rate has been cut since February from $23 to $20!

DH commented on this with dismay back then under the heading:

Wanted by D'oH: Strong minded social workers prepared to work for $23ph.

It's a sad commentary on how wages are being driven down as unemployment goes up. Pity the working class, with Centrelink whipping them from behind to force them to accept whatever employers feel like dishing out, and with a broken union movement and a toothless Labor party.

Spotless Inc, shoddy contractors, make dogs breakfast of maintenance program

DH lives in a street that HNSW is currently repainting for the 3rd time in 4 years, despite that the houses were built of paint impregnated boards that were not supposed to be painted in the first place. (But having been painted once, will have to be repainted evermore).

This second repaint is because the first lot of contractors did such a terrible job just 2 months ago.

What a terrible waste of money, for a job that didn't need to be done in the first place, didn't need to be repeated just 4 years later, and was done in some cases in a colour that jars with the existing look of the buildings, thus cheapening their value even further. Makes you wonder whether the contractors managed to get a cheap joblot of paint somewhere

And it's no use complaining, apparently that the money could have been spent on things we really need. Apparently, with the "New Maintenance Program", money is locked in for specific purposes, in this case, presumably to give jobs to painting contractors who do not appear to have got any trade qualifications whatsover.

Who are these people, who descend on our houses, hacking, botching, and smearing their way through publicly owned property?

Is there some kind of black market exploiting recent migrants?

DH had to have her bathroom floor replaced, and when HNSW inspected, the job was so poorly done that they demanded it be redone

Since the stimulus package spend, every job DH has had done has had to be redone!

What's going on? Is it just DH's karma? Was she perhaps a jerry-builder in her past life? Or are we looking at a systemic problem?

And why is Spotless Inc getting paid a fortune to totally fail to project manage these apparently straightforward jobs?

Samples of contractor's handiwork

Disclaimer for the downwardly envious: If the money saved on this shoddy work was going to be used to rehouse one of the homeless, DH would gladly have done without.

Work includes - door hacked when it didn't fit on replacement (yes, the door in the picture is shut), waterproofing is smeared on willy-nilly, vanity basin set in at angle, ceramic tiles that look dirty even when clean, tiles unaligned (not shown).












DH wants to make clear that it is not HNSW's fault. They are trying to put things right. Actually DH has asked not to have the jobs redone as it's not worth the expense and further disruption. She is not that house-proud, and there are more urgent uses for the money elsewhere. Perhaps there are not enough skilled tradespeople around for the huge amount of stimulus work?

It's the Class Struggle, Baby

After seeing the heart-breaking circumstances of homeless families living in trashy, exorbitantly priced motels, ($900 forked out weekly by HNSW!), forced to pack up weekly and move out to apply for another weeks tenure, or being exploited by ratbag landlords, DH feels really bad.

Perhaps she should rename the blog and stop claiming to be desperate? Compared to those people she is in heaven.

Should she complain about poor maintenance and HNSW inefficiency, for instance, when other people are in such desperate circumstances?

But she will resist the temptation to feel guilty.

When the Packer family, say, and all their free-loading cronies feel guilty enough to start paying taxes, then she'll shut up.

When the Labor party hits these wealthy parasite and hits them hard, then she might consider feeling guilty about having a roof over her head.

In these dire circumstances those in power, will be hoping that the poor can be divided and ruled, will be stupid enough to squabble amongst themselves over a few crumbs, while the rich go on being baled out, and allowed to speculate and carry on as before.

DH will continue to insist on speaking out critically on behalf of those who have managed to get a toehold in housing, however tenuous.

Yes, Virginia, there is a class struggle, and its getting pretty naked out there at the moment.

These people doing it tough are not Howard's euphemistic "battlers". They are simply the Australian working class, and the sooner "Labor" wakes up to whose interests they're meant to be protecting, the better.

4 Corners: Last Chance Motel: Whose fault?

Anyone who watched this heartbreaking ABC doco about homeless families in NSW must be wondering: how can this have happened in a wealthy country like ours?

The fact that the Howard Government did nothing about Housing for 11 years cd have something to do with it.

Should Howard, and his Clayton's Housing Ministers (there was no housing ministry), be compelled to face a few restorative justice sessions with some of the 150,000 victims of his neglect? Guess he was too busy bashing the poor to give them a "hand up", let alone a hand out.

Then there are the immigration quotas of 168,000 per annum: where are these people going to live? Oh, yeah, 38 to a bedroom... Now there's a solution...

And now Labor cuts $750 million out of the Housing stimulus package while the silvertail schools get another paint job. There go 800 houses, which would house, (guesstimating), 2,400 people.

But according to some ninny who wrote into the ABC's comments page, one homeless couple have only themselves to blame because they were doing a TAFE course instead of running around like lunatics looking for non-existent jobs.

Dennis Ferguson Dilemma

The broader context of the Dennis Ferguson story is that as a culture, we do not know what to do with the mentally ill, the criminally insane, or the radically neurologically different, and we know damn well that there are no easy answers.

We do not believe in dedicated psychiatric hospitals. Yet we dump people with psychiatric problems in public housing with who knows what support. If public housing fills up with enough mentally ill, aren't we going to end up with Claytons Psychiatric Hospitals, the psychiatric hospitals you have when you don't believe in having them, which means psychiatric hospitals with no services, no staff, no central office, no resources, no nothing. Apologies to the advocates for the mentally ill, but nothing describes it better than Free Range Psychiatric Hospitals

Both David Borger and today Barry O'Farrell have been grandstanding on this issue. You have to feel sorry for them, because whichever way you look, there are no easy answers, but leading populist stampedes, and giving aid and comfort to lynch mobs does neither of them credit.

Predictably, the vigilante role of the gutter press is despicable. How's this for a title from the Daily Telegraph: " Paedophile: Beware of the devil Dennis Ferguson next door"

Meanwhile, Callan Park, a sacred space, some say, for the mentally ill, is slipping out of the public's grasp. Here is an opportunity to do something creative, to create supported homes with communal facilities, perhaps onsite employment opportunities and support in place.

DH Comments on SMH Website here

Public Housing tenants in my experience are extraordinarly understanding, patient with and tolerant of their troubling neighbours, despite the fact that public housing estates have become dumping grounds for mentally ill people, drug addicts, and released prisoners, without sufficient investment in support services for them. Part of the reason is a decade's neglect of public housing by the Howard Govt, [who over its tenure ripped $3 billion out of the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement which funds the states social housing programs, and led to the current triage policy targetting housing to "those most in need"]. Partly it's the red tape associated with setting up the necessary support services, with years of pilot projects and evaluation reports. Nevertheless we as tenants understand better than most, and accept with good grace, that everyone has a right to accommodation.

There is no easy answer, but a decent society will not get off on hounding a few unfortunates while taking a "beggar my neighbour" approach, ie refusing to pay the taxes that support adequate solutions.

Labor betrays the unemployed

Wasn't the Labor party supposed to be kinder to "battlers" than the Liberals?

Yet Kafkalink has hardly changed since Labor got into power. It's as punitive as ever, despite the fact that we now have a projection of 140,000 long term unemployed thanks to the global financial meltdown.

The weekly unemployment benefit for the victims of the global financial crisis remains at just $226 per wk, plus a small rent allowance.

How is anyone supposed to live off this? If ever the "deserving poor" deserved more, it's now!

Yet Labor did not see fit to boost this paltry sum in the last budget. Why not? Because they can get away with it. Because they have chosen the easy path of pandering to the downward envy of the resentful classes, in the hope of staying a percentage point ahead in the polls.

And then there was the rat-baggery of denying the long-term unemployed the $900 stimulus bonus, when they are the ones who needed it most, and would have spent it quickest to bail out local small businesses.

And just who are the long-term unemployed anyway? Mostly people with marginal disabilities, who are perhaps a bit slow, physically or mentally, or perhaps are mildly autistic and lack the social skills to "sell themselves" in a competitive market. Maybe they suffer from complex chronic conditions, poorly controlled depression/ anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue and the like, . And of course, being over 45 is a disability in its own right when it comes to finding a job. And these are the poor wretches who are denied the disability pension, in the name of saving the Treasury a measly $100 a fortnight.

And what is Julia Gillard, the Minister for Inclusion, doing lately about "including" unemployed people when they can't even afford the bus fare to the nearest community centre? The poor buggers don't even qualify for the Pensioner Excursion fare!

PS. Not that the disability pension is anything to get too excited about. After all the hoo-haa about the "massive" boost to pensions in the last budget, it's still only $285 per week.

Gutless Labor does nothing while banks gorge on pensions

When is Federal Labor going to show some guts, and prevent the banks from charging impoverished pensioners $30 - 40 when their pension comes in too late to cover a direct debit of $10?

If nothing else, DH hopes that you will never look at a certain bank's logo in quite the same way again. Once again, they've taken $30 out of the miserable $120 a week she has to live on after rent, because her $40 quarterly insurance was taken out on midnight of the night she only had left $20 in her account.

1300 HOUSING endangering residents?

Is 1300 HOUSING's lack of an emergency line endangering residents?

[This item has been revised due to a prescient if somewhat Hobbesian insight from a commentator (see below) who writes "... if an "Emergency" line was created, then you'd wait just as long on that as you do in the regular "Maintenance" line? An "Emergency" is the opinion of the caller...". "Anonymous" has a point. Accordingly, DH now offers this anecdote only as a footnote for the historians on the teething problems of 1300 HOUSING.

In a further development, DH hears that 1300 HOUSING's performance is improving with time, and congratulates HNSW]

DH has heard the following story from a neighbour. Now DH can't completely vouch for the common sense of the neighbour, but all the more reason to be worried...

The neighbour, lets call her Mrs X, claims she smelled gas leaking in her kitchen

Mrs X tried to get through to HNSW but the line was busy. Since there is no emergency option, a After hanging on for 20 minutes, Mrs X was unceremoniously cut off.

Mrs X next rang her commercial gas company, but they wanted her to fork out $85 which she did not have, so the gas company suggested she ring Housing to make an arrangement for payment... Meanwhile presumably the house was filling up with fumes...

Now panicking, Mrs X abandoned the house, and hopped on the next bus to Broadway office to sort it all out, a good 45 minute trip...

Pity the rest of us in the street if the house had blown up in the meantime!

Planet 1300 HOUSING

Planet Housing NSW breaks free of its earthbound moorings and into the realm of pure theory

Correction: Your local office can still be contacted if you ring their original number. You will then end up on the 1300 HOUSING line. Choose option 3. If you're lucky and the line is not busy, you may get through. Then again, you may wait up to 20 minutes and end up with the call centre anyway.

Well, it's finally happened!

Housing NSW has now disappeared behind the 1300 HOUSING smokescreen.

And despite 1300 Housing's proud KPI of "every call answered in 3 minutes", a claim always taken with a grain of salt, DH has been trying for an hour to get through.

1st, a 20 minute wait before cut off. Then 3 cutoffs in a row. "Please try again later"...

Oh, and there is now no emergency line, so bad luck if the kitchen is flooding

The only thing HNSW managed to get consistently right in its cash-strapped past was that emergency maintenance was done promptly and efficiently.

Now with the New Maintenance Program's $Millions and its brave new efficiency measures, all that appears to be gone down the gurgler

And on the phone line, there is no option to sort the "Emergency" sheep from the "General Maintenance" goats.

DH has always hypothesised that communications in and out of Broadway Office
disappear into the Broadway Arm of the Bermuda Triangle.

Now it seems that the office itself has been sucked up into the ether.

Why is DH trying to ring HNSW anyway?

About a year ago, DH noticed that the bathroom floor was rotting and had begun to subside. Finally with the new maintenance money, it was replaced. But the plumbers who disconnected everything have not been back to reconnect the water since the job was completed last Tuesday. Daily calls to the Spotless foreman yielded promises to call back which never happened. Now the foreman has been replaced, and she doesn't have the new guy's number. DH would like to know what's happening. And as a concerned citizen, she would like to know if anyone is monitoring Spotless' performance. There are ungenerous mutterings from tenants asking if HNSW has given Spotless a licence to print money.

Twitter: You can follow DH's attempts to get through to
1300 HOUSING on http://twitter.com/desperatehouso
Yeah, almost as boring as sitting next to a phone for an hour.

(This post is forward dated tho the events happened on the 6th)

DH bales out

As Mothership 1300 HOUSING prepares for take off to the furtherest regions of the galaxy, DH makes a desperate last minute decision to cut loose from the stratospheric heights of TP, bale out and rejoin her fellow earthlings.

Correction: CTTT and water arrears

DH apologises for the story below. She got her facts wrong. Water rates are capped only for tenants who have no separate water meter. For those with a separate water meter, the charge is based on actual water usage, and can add up to more substantial amounts. And she has heard that the 600+ termination notices included but were not limited to water arrears. The real story is far more nuanced than she at first believed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

As originally published 20 May 2009

Can you believe that in the quarter to Dec 2008, the Department of Housing hauled over 600 tenants before the CTTT (the rental tribunal), just for falling behind on water rates?

According to the Brown Couch, the Tenants Union's blog:

Housing NSW made ... 633 applications for orders terminating the tenancies of public housing tenants for failure to pay water usage charges. Private sector landlords made no such applications – not a single one

What sort of arrears are we talking about to invoke the fearsome penalty of eviction?

Water rates are capped at $5.75 per week, so over a quarter, that suggests that the total sum for which a tenant may go through the trauma of a court hearing is under $75!

You've got to wonder how much such court proceedings cost the state by comparison.

Especially when we hear that no-one actually gets evicted despite having the full weight of the law on their shoulders. Why terrorise people with the risk of homelessness for such piddling amounts? Must a cannon be employed to shoot a mosquito?

Why not just shoot the unemployed?

A modest proposal

The Federal Budget makes abundantly clear that despite all Australia's rich natural resources, wealth and creativity, 1 million Australians and their families are excess to requirements and can just bugger off.

Wayne Swan reckons we need to brace ourselves for a cool million unemployed. And they'll find themselves having to scratch by on $227 a week.

Let's face it, the nation can't afford to keep them on a living stipend, so why not show some kindness and put them out of their misery?

Most of the unemployed are a complete waste of space anyway, aren't they? Government figures show that 1/3 of 'em have a mental health problem. How unappealing!

Sure, we need to keep a few tame depressives on hand, a few Gary MacDonalds and Rebecca Gibneys to trot out at Logies and Black Dog fundraisers, but what's the point of the rest of 'em?

But wait! If all the non-singing, non-dancing mentally-ill are not just faking it, why aren't they on the Disability Pension? Possibly because they didn't even have the nous to show up to Centrelink's Work Capacity Assessment in a wheelchair, drooling.

Then there are those other wastrels, the over 50's. Thanks to the ever receding retirement horizon, unproductive boomers can now look forward to another couple of decades of fortnightly disciplining by surly Centrelink Gen-Y's.

Have these bludgers forgotten the lessons of Anzac Day already? Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori
How sweet and right it is to die for your country. So why can't they do the right thing? Why not encourage them to jump off tall buildings in tidy batches? Think of all the jobs it would create for street sweepers,funeral directors, fertilizer manufacturers, ambulance-chasers, and more.

Oh, you think it's not their fault that they're unemployed? You think there are systemic reasons for unemployment?

What are you, some kind of Communist?

Swine-led recovery?

No, this is not a call for the return of John Howard. But maybe the swine flu will get Aussies to do what the bonus has failed to: spend our money on small business as we stockpile bags of rice and lentils. What are we gonna do for protein? How about chooks in the backyard?  For too long, the Chinese have dominated avian flu exports.  Let's show 'em some good old Aussie know-how.

 

Public Housing design worries

The Federal government has reversed the housing neglect of the Howard years with their new housing stimulus package. NSW has been allocated about $2 billion for new housing. Let's hope Housing NSW are not running around like headless chooks, because they've got just 2 years to spend the 2 bill on 6000 new housing units.

Let's hope that in their haste they don't repeat the design mistakes of the past, or impose new 'big ideas" on us.

DH is worried that everyone is talking about getting max buildings for the buck, but no-one seems to be talking about design.

Housing NGO's are pre-occupied with economic and social welfare issues, and noone is talking architecture. Yet that is what affects houso's lives most.

Is Housing NSW consulting with stakeholders at all?

Who are the designers? What are their guidelines?

I lost Rudd's $900 bonus on the Bells Line of Road

[Not really whining... writing a footnote for the social historians on how the NSW government screws the last drop of money out of ordinary citizens]

Sometimes DH could swear that she is nothing more than the State's way of making money out of the Commonwealth.

There goes a good bit of Rudd's $900 on this godforsaken downhill stretch at Bellbird Hill. And that must be the goddamn sign DH missed while blithely following the traffic downhill.

Now DH is one of the slowest drivers in NSW. On the Christmas Holidays, she was the one you were banked up behind all the way down the south coast. In 30 years of driving, she has never had a speeding ticket in her life, nor virtually any other infringement. In fact the only thing she has ever been stopped for is by anxious young police officers inquiring if she is ill, given how cautiously she drives. But they say this is a notorious stretch for fleecing motorists. But not only that. DH hasn't owned a car for years, can't afford it, but being the pioneering soul she is, she joined a car-share scheme. Who'dda thought these new fangled cars could be so light. Or that there'd be cameras springing up everywhere???

6 points

But worse was yet to come: this plus another 2 incidents, another minor speeding in the same car, a week earlier, and then wandering into some T-way while lost in the wilds of Kellyville where she'd gone to replenish her failing spirits by roaming around MacMansion Land ... no wonder the poor bloody woman was disoriented ... talk about culture shock ... being in this alien environment both she and her daughter had massive anxiety attacks as they found themselves in a time warp constantly going around the same 3 roundabouts amongst pseudo roman mansions that all looked the same while desperately trying to get back to civilisation ... and now her licence is gonna be suspended for 3 months!

But dammit. She's a good driver who is cautious, doesn't drink, take drugs, or even smoke and has never even had a prang, except maybe occasionally while reversing into a neighbours car, and its all because of the greed of the RTA, a private corporation registered in the USA, would you believe???, so they can mispend our money on idiot schemes like the Dual Carriageway on the Iron Cover Bridge

OH, NEVER MIND! She's copping it sweet, and there goes the bonus, except she's already spent it by doing the right thing by her local hair salon, the phone bill, the mobile bill, the internet bill, the pharmacist, the car share bill, oh, and the neighbour's dented mudguard...

Boo hoo.

Greetings Housos, we have come to train you!

One of the joys of unemployment at DH's age and level of infirmity is that you get to do a lot of fun courses to prepare you for jobs that you are unlikely to get because of age and disability discrimination.

Thus it is that DH found herself shoe-horned into a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment.

The objectives are to:

• round up a bunch of people with some native talent for teaching
• teach them to gibber in incomprehensible bureaucratese
• discipline them into course-delivery robots
• turn them loose to replicate

And it takes 8 agonising days!

Why can't they learn from Dr Who. One blast of the electron gun, and your brain is rehoused in a shiny new cyberman outfit.

Tramp tramp tramp. Target Learning Objective. Obliterate independent thought. Deliver Learning Outcome. Tramp tramp tramp. Evaluate Performance Criteria. Obliterate obliterate obliterate. Objective accomplished.

4F: Family First F*wit Fielding

Any chance of electors getting our cash back on this joker?


DH is increasingly horrified by a democracy that allows idiots to flourish.

When DH was a girl, idiots seemed to knew their place and kept their mouths shut. Talk about a sense of entitlement! Now they even feel they can stand up against the will of the Australian people, and position themselves as the most powerful player in Aussie politics!

And nothing is more idiotic than an idiot who believes himself to be on a mission from God.

Who voted for this idiot anyway?

Oh yeah... apparently, he got in on some preference deal that Labor set up to keep the Greens out of the Senate.

... On second thoughts, there can obviously be such a thing as too much cleverness.

Oh alright, so idiots have always flourished... but never with such a sense of entitlement.

Renovate this!

[Update Nov 20. 6 kitchen floor tiles, the rotting window frame, and the subsiding bathroom floor have now been replaced. Thank you HNSW!]


Thanks to the Labor government for the $130 million to maintain our homes and prop up our economy. And lest we forget, thanks for reversing the 12 years of housing neglect by the Howard Government.

Meanwhile in public housing in NSW there has been no money for years for anything but emergency maintenance, and stock has run down.

Here's an example just from DH's place, which is only about 25 years old.



The list includes: a subsiding bathroom floor, dry rot in the windows and door frames, poor quality carpet fraying everywhere, perished kitchen flooring, subsiding kitchen cabinets, no insulation under a hot tin roof windows that won't open, water damaged architraves.

To be honest, DH is so grateful to have a place at all that she is not much bothered. As Capitalism slides down the gurgler, being houseproud hardly seems like a priority.

How "Labor" treats the unemployed

How many people are on Newstart because they are denied the Disability Pension?

The bizarre rule for being accepted on the Disability pension is that your condition must be long term and stable.

Centrelink forces those whose condition is long term and unstable (eg not responding to medication) to stay on Newstart.

When such people apply for a Disability Support Pension, they are forced to remain on Newstart, with reduced job search requirements.

In other words, their inability to get work is tacitly recognised.

So what's the difference?

Oh, about $100 a fortnight per person in the government's coffer, extracted from the hide of some of the Australia's weakest and most unwanted..

The unemployed are the most stereotyped, stigmatised and reviled group in Australia.

Yet how many of them are actually

• chronically sick
• moderately disabled
• low-level mentally ill
• near pension age and unemployable due to age discrimination

And to add injury to insult, all these people, who are trying to get by on $225.15, a week were denied the $900 stimulus package that might have seen them catch up on a few bills at last.

And to add the 'Labor' government's irrationality to injury, these are the people who would have turned over the money most quickly! While those whose fancy lawyers and tax minimisation schemes reduce their income to $100,000 will not only receive the money, but can squirrel it away to do the economy no good at all!

All because the unemployed are the nation's scapegoats, and governments can get away with it.

Ham Hocks' geniality disguises vacuity

How disappointing that the SMH's normally endearingly acrid Annabel Crabb has turned to sickening mush over Joe Hockey's "genial" personality.

Ham Hock's performance on Q&A last week left DH foaming at the mouth. She found him neither cute nor lovable nor funny. What she saw was an overconfident buffoon hogging the limelight, while having absolutely nothing of substance to say.

We're talking about the greatest crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression. If you're going to have the gall to drown out the other panellists it's not enough to be a likeable joe. It helps to have something constructive to say.

What is it about the Joes anyway? Hockey and Tripodi - two of a kind, the class attention seekers who play up in the front row. But all their capering and clowning can't hide the fact that they haven't done their homework.

If HamHocks keeps carrying on like this, he may become DH's new poster boy for the Banality of Evil.

CEC not welcome here

You know who you are. Do not spam this website.

 

And if you don't know who they are, watch out. They are a bunch of far right conspiracy theory losers who are gleefully trying to make hay out of the global capitalist meltdown. Some of what they say is plausible. Even if its only the obvious notion that bubbles eventually burst. Other than that, look out for their weird ideas.

So you think you can dance your way out of hypercapitalist bust?

Or "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Reality TV is schooling young Australians to be the docile slaves of the new world economy. Note how alienated machine rhythms make up the most popular music. How sad to see our magnificently talented, beautiful and naive young people outbidding each other to imitate robots. Well, they'll need to be to compete internationally with 3rd world people who had any sense of their own rights and dignity beaten out of them long ago.

Role Model?

For years now, our young people have been in training. The name of the game is to swallow any humiliation your overseers can dish out. That way you can stay in the game and have a chance at the scarce prizes controlled by the pimps and whores of the corporations with the money.

And then you will be exploited and discarded.

DH was nearly sick with disgust when she watched an episode of "So you think you can dance".

Thank god her leaning disabled child who wouldn't harm a flea said she wouldn't watch another episode because she can't bear to watch people being hurt.

It makes you wonder who has a "disorder". All the cheering young things who have some saleable gifts which they can't wait to offer up for exploitation, or the learning disabled who will never get applauded, or rewarded for having nothing to give but love. And who will be forced btw to get by on a miserable pittance of about $500 a fortnight, when their support needs are so much more expensive than those of the able-bodied who can make their own way.

These shows are turning our young people into servile morons.

What a shame thatour censors focus on excising loving sex from prime television, but happily ignore shows like this, which are nothing but sado-masochism, both in attitude and content.

When these young people are not imitating machines, they are tarting themselves up to look like hyper-sexualised whores and pimps. I guess the judges like that because every criminal loves to hide the blackness of their own hearts by corrupting others.

The Biggest Loser

Now this is pure porn and takes our minds off the truly fat and ugly, those who consume most of the world's wealth, and can afford anorexic young women to make them look good.

Sickening!

DH's Housing Recovery Plan: Musical Houses

What hope is there for conventional responses to the rising tide of homelessness when according to the NY Times even the massive $275 billion thrown at the problem by Obama's recovery plan  will not come close to halting the tidal wave of foreclosures. Nor would it provide much help to millions of homeowners who are "under water," or holding mortgages that are bigger that the market value of their houses

 

So here's DH's stab at a simple solution: Musical Houses

 

After sufficient advance notice, at exactly midnight, the national broadcaster simply plays Advance Australia Fair. When the music stops... you aquire the title deeds to whatever residence your bum happens to be parked on. (Only one bum per household allowed!)

 

It's true that some worthy people might miss out. Well they shouldn't have been out on the tiles on Musical Houses night, should they?. But isn't it gratifying to know this simple measure simply wipes out private property and landlords at a stroke?

 

As for those who miss out because they're homeless and don't have a foot in any doors so what else is new? Besides they can be relocated in batches to liven up all those empty and forlorn holiday MacMansions currently blighting all our national beauty spots. .

 

In other parlance, you might call DH's scheme Nationalising Private Property, but Musical Houses sounds so much more fun.

 

Besides all decent, upstanding Australians have been schooled since our 3rd Birthday Party to cop it sweet when the music stops, and not throw a tanty.  If only the same could be said of the property-owning few, who scream blue murder and threaten to transfer their assets to the Bahamas everytime anyone tries to take their negative geary thingee off them.  

Is Hockey the best they can do???

Sadly, DH got it wrong in her entry Hockey's Last Stand: A Buffoon Capers to Oblivion

Read also DH's brief encounter with Joe at Howard govt housing inaction still coming home to roost

Not a lot of talent in the Libs is there?

Underpaid Housing staff comment

[DH thought this comment on her post about underpaid housing staff was worth lifting out of obscurity].

 

Yes, I would think $23 p.h. is definitely below par for someone with SW experience - though it's a bit hard to tell unless you're familiar with all the relevant Classes & Years, as per the Award rates for the Community sector which are accessible on the net, at least for Victoria. I get $25.58p.h. for my casual work in the welfare sector.

In Victoria Office of Housing staff are known to be paid at the lowest rate on the State Public Service Award. Yet their caseloads are just as described in the ad you've reprinted from NSW. When I talked to the CPSU official responsible for public housing staff a couple of years ago he said that their workloads were basically unmanageable and that he was worried about the psycho-emotional health of some of his OH staff.

This week an OH worker told me that all the rent rebate reviews which were due to be processed by Nov 23, '08 were still underway (the new rebate system has everyone's rent fixed for an identical 6 month period, so they all have the same processing date).

But ultimately pay and conditions should be lobbied on by the CPSU. Could it be that the union's ties to Labor are impeding their capacity to be a robust union? I wonder how these examples from NSW & Vic compare to other states?

There's no doubt that public tenants would benefit from having better paid & qualified staff.

D'oH recruitment drive stalls 5 months on

While D'oH is appealing for temp CSO contractors for the minimalist remuneration of $23 an hour, what happened to the recruitment drive launched last October for new CSO's? Eager applicants who may have devoted a day or two of their lives filling in the typical government applications with its long lists of selection criteria are still waiting to hear yay or nay 5 months on.

 

 

Wanted by D'oH: Strong minded social workers prepared to work for $23ph

Any takers for this lucrative career opportunity with D'oH?

Any "social workers" prepared to work for $23 an hour?

What does "strong minded" mean exactly?

Does that $23 include a "strong-mindedness" bonus to explain the largesse

Don't forget that $23 doesn't include sick pay or holiday pay

DH's learning disabled child's first menial job pays $21 an hour!

With this kind of offer, no wonder all the you beaut things dreamed up in head office never get implemented down at the branch offices.

Dept of Housing - Client Services Officer - Northern Shores

Department of Housing requires customer service rep for their office in the Northern Shores $23

Our client requires a strong minded and experienced customer service representative preferably with a background in social work or community care to assist with managing a portfolio of clients. Your role will be to manage your portfolio of clients while under the guide and with support from your team leader to ensure you provide high level customer service while juggling a large workload of differing priorities.

You will work in small, friendly and supportive team and where your days will be varied with tasks such as Counter Service, Office Administration and Client Visits. While the role is a temporary position there is a lot of potential to possibly advance your career within the department.

Located close to Buses. Paying $23 P/H your duties will include but won't be limited to:

• Managing a portfolio of clients and looking after their special needs
• Counter customer service
• Client visits
• General Administration

Must have:

• Previous experience in a customer service background
• Social Work or Case Work desirable
• Excellent open and friendly communication skills both verbal and written
• Proven conflict resolution skills
• Ability to understand and interpret policy
• A current driver's license a must
• Ability to work well under pressure as well as in a team environment
• Understanding of confidentiality and a strong work ethic

No additional funding to house bushfire victims

Kevin Rudd has just announced on Question Time that  "the Victorian Govt can draw on the $6.4 billlion social housing fund", or $1.x billion of it to house those left homeless. Let's hope that most of those who lost their homes were insured, otherwise what about the people that have been on the wait lists for years? Will they be displaced by those who are the "more deserving" new poor?

Bubbles' r 'us, or, the Banality of Greed (from the Brown Couch)

For those of you who prefer facts and figures to opinion, check out Debt and blame from the Tenants Union's new blog, The Brown Couch.  In it "Chris" illustrates with graphs and all just exactly how "with his Capital Gains Tax reforms, Peter Costello behaved like a tout at the door to the casino", while greedy mums and dads gambled our prosperity away.

 

It confirms DH's point of view about the detested Howard Government. Sure she despised Howard and Co. But who voted for him? Who demanded continual pandering? The coalition of the small-time Greedy and the Resentful, and the Comfortably Amoral.

 

The bubble ' r ' us

 

What hope for the human race when we're no smarter than locusts. Like them, we eat everything out till there's nothing left. Then we wonder why there's nothing left...

What's a $Billion here or there?

DH hopes that her old Political Economy lecturer, Prof Frank Stilwell, will straighten her out about the global financial crisis this Friday at Politics in the Pub.

Alas all she recalls of from her days as a student of Economics is the Golden Rule as expounded to all first year PE students at Sydney Uni

The Golden Rule of Economics

Whoever has the gold, makes the rules

Still, she avers, that is all ye need to know, other than its corrollary, never be intimidated by economic jargon.

DH looks forward to meeting followers of the Diary on the night, though she regrets that she will not be wearing a lobster on her head for easy identification.