Housing Minister Matt Brown talks tough (to small fry)

Mild-mannered NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown is the the latest in a long line of Labor Housing Ministers (think the "Honorable" Joe "Mr Clean" Tripodi, and Cherie "Trust Me, I was a Houso" Burton) who get off on talking tough to small fry.



Referring to the new Tenant Fraud Amendments to the Housing Act 2001 tabled in Parliament last week, which will see draconian measures to combat public housing tenant fraud, Matt Brown told the Daily Telegraph "We won't cop anyone ripping off those most in need".

And BMW owners have had a wake-up call too from our fearless Minister. They can forget about applying for public housing now. They'll just have to go back to the North Shore where they belong.

This inflammatory language is certain to rebound on the vast majority of honest tenants scratching to get by in poorly maintained housing stock, thanks to combined Howard Government parsimony and lack of commitment and imagination from NSW Labor.

Like the renowned Strong Man of NSW, Morris Iemma, (oh, please, don't frighten us!), young Matt has taken to talking big, in language he wouldn't dare use if he was targetting the major perpetrators of fraud in this country, big business tax "minimizers".

Think Kerry Packer, who got a State Funeral for his services to Tax Evasion. That parasite is still getting increasingly moist-eyed obituaries lamenting the "good old days", when the bugger paid practically no tax, and then gambled away the hard labor of Australians in overseas casinos and horse races.

DH fails to invest $1,000,000 in Super

Gol-DANG it!

She missed the deadline, while equivocating on the ethics of depriving the poor of their rightful taxes.

It was a tough call, but in the end DH had to stand on principle.

Having lambasted the parasitic Packers and their imitators so often in these pages, it would have seemed like poor form to join them by robbing the poor to give to the rich. She wonder how much welfare budgets will dip from the uncollected taxes?

Oh, alright.

DH doesn't have $1M.

Here are the true state of her finances:

$225.82 a week after fixed expenses!

Not a lot left over for FOOD, holidays, entertainment, MEDICATIONS, white goods, EDUCATION, textbooks, courses, excursion, REPAIRS, furnishings, GAP FEES on glasses, dental work, doctor's visits, CLOTHES, hospitalisations, BANK FEES, memberships, subscriptions, charity donations, SAVINGS, is there?

Charity means never having to say "We're accountable"

As we know, the 3 Stooges, 'Bad Daddy' State is offloading its welfare responsibilities to charities, by the tried and tested principle that whoever has a heart will eventually pick up the tab. They know that the bleeding heart Mummies of the Nation, (whether it's nurses, teachers,pr the good ladies of Vinnies) will work miracles on low, or no, pay.

After 7 weeks of unemployment DH has only received about $280 from Centrelink (Yes, for the benefit of the Downwardly Envious, DH has been looking for work, and does have something lined up, but still has to eat and pay bills in the meantime.) She has had to approach various charities for electricity vouchers, food vouchers and financial assistance.

DH believes that Social Security is, as its name implies a form of insurance for all of society. As a taxpayer for over 30 years, DH feels she has more than paid her premiums to tide her over in her times of need.

The charities have helped her and she appreciates their effort. But she is depressed by their naivety, and for all the grief they give "the poor" as a result. DH doesn't want money in the name of a mythical Jesus with a reputedly bad attitude on things she holds dear, such as a Woman's Right to Choose, or the rights of homosexuals to love who they want. No, DH wants the rights that were fought for by generations of unionists, reformers, and socialists. If we left social policy to the religious, women like DH would still be veiled and begging on the outskirts of town.

Charity is demeaning. Why should DH have to explain her life situation to strangers who have little education, or understanding, who know nothing about disability. Why should DH have to feel guilty because these poor souls turn up after a hard days work and she wasnt home when they called, even if she wasnt told they were coming?

What on earth are they thinking when they ask you "How much money do you need?".

Consider DH's inner dialogue:

Oh dear. What shall I say??? What is a fair amount?

If I get it wrong and ask for too much, will they think I am a bad selfish person? Will I be depriving others who are more needy than myself? I wonder how many other clients they've had this week? Am I even needy, or am I just a bad person who's not pulling their weight in society? Is my child really disabled? Am I really fatigued and depressed? Am I a dead loss to society if I don'tget a job at Woolworths as a checkout crone? How much longer can I afford to keep paying for private health insurance? ... yet if I stop now, how will I pay for my child's wisdom teeth extraction?

Yet, if I ask for too little, will I end up with less than I could have got?

Why should DH have to explain a disability that the volunteer ladies don't understand. Why should she feel desperate to prove that she is not making it up? Hasn't she had enough grief already? .Must she dramatise all the dramas of her life, which are bad enough as it is without having to turn on a royal command performance?

And what about the charities that ask you to put together a budget of all your expenses, including clothes, outings, entertainment?

HULLO! How much do YOU think we spend on entertainment and clothes from a weekly income of $250 after rent, which must still pay for transport, food, utilities, medications, school fees, telcom, .

Then there's the billionaire philanthropist who has set up a fund to give out food vouchers (from his own company ... one can only imagine the tax breaks he's getting. Why doesnt he just bloodoy well pay up his taxes and pressure his political cronies into maintaining a decent social security system?) (and where the hell is Kerry Packer when you need a good whipping gent?) Anyway, you can get the billionaires vouchers if you can get past the suspicious termagent who guards the phone... What they havent figured out is how you're supposed to get the shopping home - since the billionaire's company doesnt have a shop in your area, of the $100 voucher, $20 goes to the taxi fare home with the shopping.

Oh well, thank God, in our Brave New Australia, gotta be grateful we have food vouchers...

DH has to confess that she just spent $40 on a little black dress. But it was discounted from $120! She needed it to attend "drinks" for a leftist Labor politician, so she could hold her own amongst the Labor Glitterati without having to be ashamed of looking like a houso...

Nothing to hide, nothing to lose?

Well, though DH has nothing major to hide,  her recent trauma with DoH has opened her eyes to just how much she had to lose.

 

She has not had dealings with the legal system before, because Australia actually used to be relaxed and comfortable before John Howard turned us into a nation of diary-dependent accountants 

 

She realised that under the searchlights of the legalistic gaze, her failure to recall, say,  exactly whether her last appointment with her hairdresser was in 2001 or 2002 and whether it post or pre-dated her conversation with a DOH call centre person whose name was either Bill or Steve, who may have had a slight South Australian accent, but wouldnt give a reference number ... well, it all began to take on a sinister cast. Even DH began to doubt herself. Perhaps she really had spent all the rent money on having her foils done that one time, and perhaps her life has been a sordid trail of lies fraud and cover ups ever since.

 

And what about her claim that she has rung the DOH 8 times in the prior 2 weeks, and they had only called back twice. How was she to prove that when she didnt have a reference number for a call that never happened.

 

Now compare and contrast with John Howards' situation.

 

He has everything to hide, but seemingly aint going to lose a thing.

 

We know that he knows we know that he knew perfectly well that Aussie wheat bribes were going to buy armaments that could be used to kill Aussie boys and girls in Iraq. But he just keeps stonewalling and he'll get away with it.

 

Lets not even talk of Kerry Packers legally robbing the Australian public of a billions in tax.

 

 

 

 

DH Carer's Pension cancelled.

If it wasn't enough that DH is facing eviction proceedings, she has now had her carer's pension cancelled. Why? Because she cannot make ends meet unless she works more than 15 hours a week. To qualify for Carers Pension you need to work less than 25 hours a week. And then just when you think you can somehow do it a stretch, you discover almost by accident that in fact its less than that because Centrelink wants to know exactly how many hours you take to travel to work so that they can delete that from your allowable hours. With the traffic snarls in Sydney, it takes DH 1 hour each way, or 10 hrs a week in Sydney buses. Once again, Centrelink and DOH act in tandem to pincer Carers.

Take a look at DH's CV to the left of this column. She is hardly a welfare bludger and gives back a hell of a lot more than she gets both in her underpaid job, and as a volunteer. Over the years she has saved taxpayers a fortune in services for carers that they didnt have to provide because she did it all herself while managing to work fulltime, acquire an honours degree, be a volunteer and a community activist.

Let us be perfectly blunt. If society is not prepared to foot the additional bill for disabled children, mandatory abortion of suspect foetuses would be far more efficient and less hypocritical.

Yet the system manages to wrongfoot and almost criminalise her about a bill for approximately $2000. While DH has to endure verbal abuse from a low-ranking and dysfunctional public servant who has the power to treat her as if her only aim in life was to cheat the Department of Housing of 2 weeks rent, Kerry Packer just got a state funeral for not paying any tax on his billions, and for his services to that neediest of social groups, wealthy obese old rogue males. (who else needs those ambulances with their expensive defibrillating gizmos?)

To be fair, some of this is simply because the system does not recognise or understand the hidden costs of Autistic Spectrum Disorders and how they affect a life trajectory in work and welfare.

Fortunately, DH is an incurable change-agent, and she feels a PhD coming on.

Who needs money and secure housing anyway, as long as you have an interesting life?

While Packer a gets state funeral for evading tax...

... and squandering the money extracted from the teeth of Australian workers on foreign gambling dens, working mothers of disabled children,  living in public housing,  struggle to put food on the table and are treated like criminals if they default on a a couple of weeks rent.

 

When will the people of Australia wake up and get rid of this miserable crew in Canberra, their parasitic cronies, and a gutless Labor party whose only policy response to every question is to beat the populist drum and pander to the worst instincts of an electorate terrorised by artifical scarcities caused by too many wealthy pigs feeding at the public trough?

 

 

Send the parasitic Packers packing