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.

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.

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.