Welfare to Workhouse: Howard's "Deadbeat Dad" state abuses the bride and abandons the kids

DH has been reading a new report Poverty and Family Life under Welfare-to-Work: The Continuing Failure of Welfare Policy. (Helen Cameron, University of Sth Australia)

It's a great kick-ass report even if it does state the bleedin' obvious. After years in the big filing cabinet for human creativity called University, DH has been browbeaten into accepting that we need this kind of work to stick it to policy wonks in language they can't turn their noses up at. And, of course, preparing this kind of study does keep the middle classes off the streets and feeling important. DH is not knocking it - she may well end up being tidied up into something similar again soon. She's not about to turn her nose up at the last boat out of under-class stigma, marginalisation, and lack of status.

Though give DH a good cartoonist anytime to say the same thing without the verbiage.

But for those of you who get off on this kind of earnest thing, here are some great quotes.

The welfare-to-work "solution" can be thought of as a match made in hell. It puts poor mothers who need the most support and flexibility into jobs in the low-wage labor market which often are the most inflexible [and] have the least family-necessary benefits (Albelda 2000, p.32).

Meahan (2005) notes the ‘precarious positions of single parent families’ under Workchoice policy and about this pushing parents into an underpaying labour market without any beneficial impacts on their life chances or those of their children

[We should avoid ...] any approach that further demonises these families through suggesting they are responsible for their circumstances. ... our silence about poverty[... is] part of a social redefinition that dampens empathy and blocks any transformation of the circumstances of the poor. These parents are raising the next generation however and any processes that further limit these families’ life chances is an act against the future.

Read the whole thing at

http://www.uq.edu.au/swahs/welfaretowork/HelenCameronPaper.pdf

Welfare Bermuda Triangle

Can the Bermuda Triangle migrate in the manner of the hole in the ozone layer? If so, it's hovering right over DH"s place.

Consider all that has gone missing lately

• Letter from Centrelink promised Wed Sep 13 (see below) advising DH of her work capacity test appointment (without which she has been told she cannot join Job Network
• Response from D'oH to job application sent several months ago. (DH just rang to inquire, but was advised that decision was made ages ago and she didnt get the job. However no courtesy letter saying yay or nay has been rec'd from our ever efficient department)
• Application form for another position in D'oH promised 5 days ago
• One charity volunteer supposed to bring Electricity Vouchers (great move from Howard. Charity means never having to say "We're accountable", on the ground that it's charity and recipients should be grateful)
• Food vouchers from charity. (see previous point on accountability). "Oops, we forgot to bring them, but never mind, we'll send them tomorrow with our other volunteer" (see previous point on missing volunteer ).
  That was a week ago. Just as well DH borrowed money from elsewhere to tide her over
  
• And last but not least, D'oH contract tradespeople are notorious for disappearing without trace on the appointed day

OTOH, this theory breaks down somewhat when you consider the deluge of paperwork that arrives from Centrelink - see the little beaudies on the right...

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...

State funeral for a speed freak

Well, what can you expect from the "Bad Daddy" State. Honouring their own again.

Honestly, this gets on DH's goat. DH is not a sportin' lady, so excuse her for asking: What has this guy done except hooned around making a lot of noise, revving engines, spewing pollution. and then crashing into a tree. Good old Germaine has got it right again. And there better be a state funeral for her when she finally kicks the bucket.

Bungle du jour a la Centrelink

Will it EVER end?

DH trekked out all the way to the C'link offices clutching her fortnightly application for payment form. The submission date hardcoded on the form was 12th September.

She was informed that the computer had it wrong and her submission date should be the 15th.

Q: Centrelink got it wrong, but guess who was to be penalised.

1. Centrelink
2. The mug customer
3. Don't know

A: Do you doubt it???

Centrelink got it wrong, therefore, DH was expected to drop everything and trek down to the C'link AGAIN on the 15th - WITH THE SAME FORM!

The functionary behind the desk looked shell-shocked and wouldn't budge, just kept repeating the same mantra, "Yes, I know its our mistake, but yes, you still have to come in".

Fortunately, DH, remembering her former middle-class incarnation, insisted on seeing a supervisor. This poor bloke scratched his head and reckoned he couldnt make head or tail of her file! And this despite the fact that her case is perfectly ordinary. She reported on the 3rd of August, should have started receiving payment thereafter, and its been one bungle after the other since.

Anyhow, the fellow eventually took pity on DH, changed the date on the form, and let her off the which is great because DH had a busy day on Friday. If you must know, she is an amateur actress, and she was desperately making props for the premiere of her latest musical comedy, (in which she is once again typecast as a fishwife)

Anyhow, it's a mystery. How can so many things go wrong with one simple file??? DH can only guess that God is watching over her blog, wants her to tell it like it is, and this is his way of sending her copy.

Bread, circuses and state funerals

Time was when two old diggers couldn't sit down for a beer without John Howard popping up between them for a photo opportunity. But he's found a bigger winner this year with the lumpen-middle class, the "MacMansions and Circuses" brigade. He's throwing around State Funerals like there's no heavenly reward for virtue. As long as you're a sportsman or apolitical entertainer that is.

Anyone have any idea of how many state funerals there have been for women by the way ...

Plaint of 1st Century politician: Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses (Satires of Juvenal, 60-100 AD)

Hurrah! A Centrelink payment at last after 6 weeks!

All of $73!!!

... and this has to cover the next fortnight ...

oh, except that $35 went to the Commonwealth bank as a fine for her HCF direct debit defaulting.

That leaves DH with just $39.99 for the duration

Note to Vinnies and Salvos: Expect another call soon. (watch this space for the Intelligent Woman's Guide to Becoming a Charity Case)

Worry du jour: Health insurance

Wake early aching all over (can't afford a softer mattress) .

 

Toss and turn, worrying about defaulting HCF payment (the second in a row). DH is now $440 in arrears, plus has incurred $70 in bank fees for the 2 defaulting payments. She is in it as a family with her mother, which allows her to share the cost and cover her child at the same time. She would get out of it, but her daughter needs to have all her wisdom teeth removed.  So much money gone down the drain already, pity to stop now, only to find self with horrible hospitalisable disease bummer the very next day, would be typical, and just DH's luck. Will use tax refund (due any day now) to pay off HCF arrears and hope mother doesnt need major surgery in next two weeks. Just have to borrow from same long-suffering friend as last time.

 

 

 

For the record: Work capacity testing. disability, AS

Centrelink called back as promised. As in almost every encounter, the young woman from the call centre was quite lovely, very sympathetic and considerate. But as usual, the administrative chaos was on show. DH told that the reason she had not been registered with a job network member was because she was scheduled for a "Work Capacity Test" first. This was news to DH, as she did not register as having a disability. However, there was some discussion at her interview about carer stress despite her not meeting the criteria for a carer's pension, and it appears that all this somehow got lost in the system.

Note: All this requires an understanding of the complexities of the newly named Autistic Spectrum Disorders, or "Asperger Syndrome". It is a disability of social communication, and is outside the established categories of disability (intellectual, physical, or "psychiatric"). People with AS are not intellectually disabled, do not need constant supervision, in fact are often happiest left alone with their special interests. Nevertheless, they can be socially helpless, require a lot of emotional input, and in some ways can be more demanding on families than other kinds of disabilities. For those who believe every new disability is just a political stunt to get on the victim bandwagon/ luxuriate on the disability pension, (whyever???!!!) AS is not a new disability, just a newly named disability. Eventually many families affected by AS ended up in other kinds of trouble, usually pigeonholed as "mentally ill", people with AS often presented with anxiety and depression due to bullying and lack of understanding of their difficulties, while their families were stigmatised as somehow "causing" their odd behaviour, and with carer stress causing isolation and depression, }

For Centrelink Appeals Committee's eyes only

What, still here?

• What are you, some kind of masochist?
• Do you have a paper fetish?
• Get off on being disciplined by bureaucratic troikas?
• Do you just love to crawl cap in hand before appeals committees?
• Do you like to ring Centrelink just to hear inexperienced young CSO's whisper acronyms into your ears?

Then read on, you're in the right place.

DH will be using this diary to record contacts with Centrelink in all their mind-numbing detail.

Why? Because the unequal onus of proof on what transpires in interviews with Centrelink penalises its clients. This diary will be an outside witness to her claims.

Frinstance, [see below for blow-by-blow) DH phone Kafkalink on 3rd August to claim Newstart. Advised that all was hunky-dory and her Newstart allowance would be back-dated to that date. However, though she has the receipt number to prove her call, nevertheless, Centrelink now will only pay her from the 16th.

Centrelink's computer system, while recording her phone call and receipt no, did not record the purpose of the call and therefore denies all responsibility for backdating her payment.

However, dont bother wasting your life reading this unless you are

1. on the Centrelink Appeals Committee
2. have an academic interest in the level of control Centrelink now exerts on the day to day life of Australian citizens

Record of phone conversation with Centrelink (receipt # available on request)

NB: As usual the Call Centre Blokeperson (CSB) on the other end of the line was very helpful, really nice, and had a good sense of humour. He was very knowledgable as well, which is unfortunately not always the case given the reputedly high turnover rate of call centre staff. It's the policies that are crook, not the Centrelink workers who do an impossible job with great consideration and kindness.

Facts:

1. DH's dole diary is due on the 11th
2. Her application for payment form is due on the 12th
3. Therefore she wants to know if this is a slip-up, or whether she seriously is expected to take the bus to Leichhardt on 2 consecutive days.
4. She is doing a training course all day on the 12th, and cannot hand the form in personally anyway
5. Her Activity Agreement also stipulated that she must make at least 1 job search contact per ftnight via a job network member (JNM), and she has not yet got an appt with one.
6. She was advise by the CSB that
   • it wd be OK to hand in boths form on the 13th, or else fax the form and take in the diary at a later date.
   • that it was not DH's responsibility to seek a JNM, but that she should have been referred to one by Centrelink at her 3rd interview
7. The CSB undertook to refer her case back to the CSO at the intake interview, re getting her in touch with a JNM by phone in the next 2 or 3 days
8. The CSB assured her that she would not be penalised due to not having been in contact with a JNM
9. The CSB undertook to post her an appeals form.

Centrelink, it's your call.

--
Posted by DH to Diary of a Desperate Houso at 9/11/2006 01:56:22 PM

Centrelink chicanery

Item 1. Deceptive practise 

 

DH is gobsmacked at the depths of chicanery* to which Howard's Centrelink has sunk in order to save itself $400  - money that means nothing to the taxpayer but means quite simply that she is now absolutely destitute and reliant on food vouchers, is under financial house arrest as she and her daughter have less than $10 left in the world. Her first Centrelink payment after a month of unemployment will be $11 (as the Department of Housing has first claim due to its direct debit arrangement)

 

DH's job ended on 3rd August. She rang up Centrelink on that day to claim Newstart or a Carer's Pension. (You can verify this for yourself on this blog for the 3rd of August).  Due to the obvious misinformation suppled by the young call centre operator, she told Centrelink that she would call back when she had made an informed decision. (DH has now heard from Centrelink insiders that Centrelink's call centre operators are indeed as ill-informed and poorly trained as they sound, thanks to high staff turnover in an impossible job)

She was assured that provided she called back within 2 weeks, her claim would be backdated to the 3rd.

 

DH rang back on the 7th August notifying her intention to claim Newstart. She duly received a letter stating that her claim had been rec'd,  along with a page of details that does not look anything like a usual Centrelink form, but which apparently was meant to be signed and sent in by the 16th.

 

DH was not informed of any of this verbally, all she knew was that she had done everything required of her, had made an appointment for a phone interview, and trusted that everything was OK, Being busy, she did not read the small print, She still had sufficient trust as an Australian citizen to believe that information given by phone, (with receipt number) in such a serious matter could be trusted.

 

At her intake interview in Parker St however, she was shocked to discover that because she had not sent in this form, her claim would only start 2 weeks later. The phone receipt counted for nothing, because Centrelink did not record a reason for the call. How convenient for them,to assume that DH had merely rung up for a bitter of a natter about this and that, totally unrelated to a need to get sustenance.

 

If this is not chicanery, what is?

Item 2. Holiday pay scam

 

DH also found that as she had 13 days holiday pay coming to her, her Centrelink payment would be delayed too weeks. While DH considers this ethically outrageous,  (as it penalises workers who do not claim their holiday pay out of a misguided sense of responsibility. DH wishes now that she had taken more leave from her job. She has been far too generous to her ungrateful employer), Nevertheless this is a rule not a scam.

 

The scam is that this holiday pay period does not start from the date that work ends, but from the date that the employer actually pays you. DH;s employer gave her her holiday pay a week late. It's pure chicanery on Centrelink's part that they penalise her a weeks pension because her employer paid her late.,

 

If this is not chicanery, what is?

 

 

 

chicanery. –noun, plural -er-ies.

1.	trickery or deception by quibbling or sophistry: He resorted to the worst flattery and chicanery to win the job.

2.	a quibble or subterfuge used to trick, deceive, or evade.

 3. the use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them) [syn: trickery, chicane, guile, wile, shenanigan]

 

[Source. www.dictionary.com]

Howard's "Deadbeat Dad State" does a runner

Howard's Daddy State is acting like an abusive husband toward his welfare bride and dependants.

DH's Newstart interview yesterday, left her reeling in shock with the Howard Government's absolute contempt for natural justice, (details in next blog entry), and got her thinking.

If Howards Centrelink had a personality, what would it be?

Consider the profile of a battering husband.

1. Control freak. Wants to know every aspect of bride's movements. Suspects bride of being in sexual relationship with any person of the opposite sex who enters the house, and will send spies to check her toothbrush collection if necessary.
   
2. Paranoid tendancies. Needs constant reassurance of bride's fidelity. Forces her to keep diary detailing every movement, and checks it regularly
   
3. Belittles and demeans bride at every opportunity till the downward spiral of low self-esteem becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Humiliates her in public at every opportunity.
   
4. Financially abusive. Is filthy rich, has money to burn when it comes to private detectives to keep bride under surveillance, and for junkets with his big-end mates, but controls domestic purse strings so tightly that there is barely enough to feed the children. Bride cannot afford decent clothes or haircuts so becomes shame-ridden and begins to hide away from friends and networks that might support her. May dream of escape, but without the busfare to town, never makes it. Besides, husband has used clout in local chamber of commerce to run domestic violence shelters out of town.
   
5. Has his way with her whenever he feels like it.
   
6. In public passes himself off as pillar of community.

Shame on Hillsong: Enforcers for "Welfare to Work(house)"

Hillsong will get at least $650 of the $1600 stripped from unemployed people for minuscule breaches of Howard and Cronies' draconian Welfare to Workhouse rules. No other church group will touch it.

The Howard crew are happy to use Hillsong despite their shady past. Hillsong was stripped of a $414,479 federal grant this year amid claims it obtained the funds by deceiving the Aboriginal community that was supposed to be a beneficiary. (SMH).

Give them a call at and tell them what you think at 02 8853 5353.

Is DH a dole bludger?

DH has received two comments recently advising her to "get a job" and stop being a drain on the taxpayer. While 2 letters are hardly a statistical sample, we all know that their content is representative of the currents of resentment in the community. These are the currents that allow Howard and Co's Wedge Politics based on stereotypes and misinformation to get workers to cut off their own noses to spite their faces. Like bulls at a red rag, both DH's readers jumped straight to the conclusion that DH was a habitual dole bludger, when the reality is that she has held a variety of very responsible jobs (see her profile). Most of her periods of unemployment were years ago. before her child went to high-school.

 

Her search for work is subject to the demands on her as a carer of a dependant with a disability. She has various health issues of her own commensurate with her age and a lifetime of stress, having no family support whatsoever and no assets and resources other than her wits, often dimmed by depression. She works hard but cannot work fast, and its a moot point whether the economy will be better off with her gumming up the works somewhere. 

 

Nevertheless, rest assured,  she will be foisting herself and her various ailments on some unsuspecting employer any day now. But with the Right's Welfare to Work(house) jamming square-pegged employees willy-nilly into the first available round-hole jobs, all she can say is "Caveat Employer".

Kafkalink phone interview

Pity the poor low-paid bugger at the other end of the phone, having to ask a raft of intrusive and offensive questions, and endure the flak from outraged interviewees, or face the prospect of taking their place on the other end of the phone.

 

John Howard has turned the Might Bronzed Oz into a nation of browbeaten accountants, smiling waiters, and whipped dogs. Pretty much in his own image.

 

Kafkalink limbo. A tale of bureaucracy gone mad in Howard's bold new Australia

Weren't the Liberals supposed to stand against centralised control, the intrusion of the state in private life, and governmental red tape?

Such is ever the way with what Jung called "the shadow", the unconscious mind that acts in opposition to our conscious self-image. Thus it is that over time, Liberal and Labour may find themselves trading ideological places.

For now, Howard and Co, with their talk of a "relaxed and comfortable" Australia, have turned Centrelink into a bureaucratic monster.

Consider the good old days

You showed up at Centrelink with your documentation, grumbled in a queue for 10 minutes, had your details entered, were issued with an interim pension card so you cd at least afford a bus fare to look for work, and you went home. While you were sleeping, Centrelink did a background check, and your notice arrived in the mail with your payment details. END OF STORY

Consider Kafkalink

1. Ring up. Are read an interminable list of disclaimers and rights (which every Australian citizen used to be able to take for granted). Your details are noted. A flurry of letters result, including "Confirmation of your intention to claim" and "Preliminary Claim for Newstart."
   
2. This phone interview, however, is merely an interview to make an appointment for a 2nd phone interview. !!! But alas! Phone interviewers are booked out for another 10 days,.
   
3. Mind you, the 2nd phone interview will not be your intake either. It is merely an interview to make an appointment for a 3rd interview :-) !!!

So for now, DH is in limbo between 2 phone calls that will decide her fate.
In the meantime, how is she to afford the busfare to look for work , or her medications?*

Fortunately, her backpay has finally arrived, so she personally will be able to limp along, but what about all the other poor buggers who are in the private rental market with no income?

Sinatra's secret love children bludging off public housing?

What the! has Sinatra's secret love child got to do with public.housing???

SFA. But apparently the Sydney Morning Herald, our nations' top broadsheet (Melbourne doesn't count), saw fit to make this crapola the lead feature of its Saturday edition, splashing the story in giant type across its front page banner, while the national crisis in housing affordability didnt even rate, with Battlers in Bulldozers being buried unsung in News Review.

What IS GOING ON with the Herald??? Why is it pandering to the Lumpen-middle-classes? Why don't the people who are attracted to the this trash get a life???

Anyhow, DH wants to get in on the act. She will be monitoring sitemeter closesly to see if her new editorial approach will increase her rating.

A few corrections for SMH readers

DH spent about an hour talking to Debra Jopson, and is very happy about the report
(at http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/housing/story2.html).
Just a few things were misunderstood, probably lost among the verbiage due to DH's fondness for extended qvetching.

1. DH is not personally threatened at this stage with expulsion from public housing due to "high" income, as she is not on a fixed term lease, having been a tenant before 2005.
   
   
2. She did not sit on her bum being unemployed for 8 years straight. Her unemployment is intermittent, 8 of her 18 years as a sole parent. This is a result of: the insecurities of contract work; lack of affordable child care; and the added pressures of raising a child with a disability.
   
   While right-wing governments would love to force all workers onto contract, social security systems which require predictability and simple rules, cannot cope.
   
   This is why DH went through the hell of being hauled before the Rent Tribunal (see earlier months of this blog) and why she is constantly paying money back to Centrelink for reasons that are beyond even her advanced Excel skills.
   
   
3. DH did not end up earning $46,000 this year, as her circumstances changed since talking to the Herald. She only started work mid-financial year. The spreadsheet below reports the actual situation (with $87 a week left after fixed expenses). At the time she spoke to Debra her spreadsheet was based on her full-time wage, but as the carer of a demanding teenager with a disability, she had to give up full-time work. Thanks to this, she was spared this year from having to pay HECS and Austudy.
   
   D'oH calculates rent on Gross income before HECS/Austudy comes off, thus creating a disincentive to education as well as work.
   

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.

Hope for Housos in Balmain pre-selection

DH has had an opportunity to hear Verity Firth and Alice Murphy, the two candidates for pre-selection for the new State seat of Balmain talk about their commitment to public housing, Both are obviously passionate about the crucial role of public housing in retaining the social mix of the city. Both have the energy and intellect to think creatively about the challenges of housing policy:  Howard and Co crippling the States funding for public housing;  the dangers of ghettoisation within estates, the need to get developers to take responsibility for housing.

 

Now DH's poor brain goes into overload on the intricacies of policy and high finance, and she gets bored with the many motherhood statements that are the necessary evils of candidacy. But what she reckons we should be looking for in a candidate is someone who is naturally altruistic, passionate and warm-hearted, smart and quick on their feet,  flexible, able to listen, learn and bend to reason, has a track record of achievements, can reliably deliver on their commitments, and etc etc.

 

Both Verity and Alice have these qualities in spades, and DH can't resist adding that when it comes to mixing IQ and EQ, doesnt it just take a woman!

 

Whichever one wins, and selectors will have a hard time deciding between Bib and Bub, (both proud mothers of heart-meltingly adorable new babies), housos in the area will have an effective champion. They'll need one against the likes of the horrid Tweedle chums, Cherie Burton and Joe Tripodi.

 

And how good was it to open today's SMH and see Debra Jopson and co nail the ever-malodourous Tripodi (whose sole public statement as housing minister was to heartlessly threaten to deprive us Housos of our hard won BMWs!)

Day 13: Cheap banking: Woolworths "Ezy" banking loses pay cheque.

Balance Sheet: (Same as 2 days ago. DH still under financial house arrest. Food stocks running low.)

 

Ezybanking: $19.95 DR. Mastercard $1418.15 DR; Daughter's a/c $15.70; Cash on hand; $5 + breadcrumbs found in a coat pocket, half a jar of 5 and 10 cent pieces, Investments: Nil.

 

So much for cheap banking for low income earners! As if DH wasn't stressed enough, now Woolworths has lost DH's pay cheque. Her local WW is always running out of envelopes for the drop box, and she was advised by the staff to simply put her cheque in a plain envelope that they provided. Despite a premonition of doom, DH did as advised. 

 

Today she rang the bank. Just as she feared, the cheque is lost.

Day 12: Financial House Arrest:

Balance sheet: No change. Bank penalties due to insufficient funds $70 and climbing.

DH has been under house arrest for two days as she doesnt have the bus fare or the price of a latte to make it worth going out... Just as well the fridge is well-stocked. OK, so she and daughter are not starving because if worst comes to the worst she can put the hard word on someone.

And though she had to go cold turkey off some of her medications when they ran out, as it will be weeks before she gets her pension card and she cant afford them otherwise, its not life-threatening, just uncomfortable, and means she doesnt get enough sleep and snaps at her daughter.

She is doing this blog not because she is really in despair, but because she wants it on the record that this can happen to well-educated, competent, formerly middle-class women.

Anatomy of a work disincentive. The "Good Life" on $87 a week

Check the spreadsheet (pdf) or click on the image to see where the money goes

Here is one reason why DH was glad her contract ended. She worked 4 days (28 hours) per week. (As the parent of a disabled teenager, part-time work was all she could handle.) After D'oH rent, transport, privatised health costs, and fixed costs like gas and electricity, she had only $87 a week left.

Fixed costs btw, do not cover FOOD or any of the items below.

$87 a week had to cover food, drygoods, clothes, cosmetics, repairs, emergencies, household goods, medical and dental gap fees, taxis, holidays, daughter's university fees, textbooks, stationery and consumables, not to mention female unmentionables, and basic social capital goods, eg newspapers, club and organisation membership fees, outings, accidental losses, presents, charity donations, lattes…

So how does her family survive?

Her daughter also gets a disability pension, a princely sum of $160 per week. That's it, $240 per week for everything. She borrows from her mother's age pension at the beginning of the week, and her mother borrows it back at the end.

Why doesn't she work full-time or get a higher paying job?

Rent and tax take the bulk of it. Once she earns a certain amount, the percentage that goes on rent also increases. And once she earns over that, she begins to pay HECS, and Austudy, and must pay rent on the gross amount including money she nevers sees. And if she was one of the unfortunates who got their housing after 2005 and was on a fixed tenancy, she would be facing eviction for earning "too much".

Day 11: DH embarks on criminal career to finance bus-trip into town

Balance Sheet: Ezybanking: $19.95 DR. Mastercard $1418.15 DR; Daughter's a/c $15.70; Cash on hand; $5 + breadcrumbs found in a coat pocket, half a jar of 5 and 10 centpieces, Investments: Nil. Car: Nil.

It's all getting a bit too much like convict-era England. DH expects to be shipped off to Nauru any day now for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread.

She had to go into town, but didnt have the ante for a Metro 10. Nor could she afford 4 times $2.80 to do her errands. Though she is entitled to a Pension Card, she estimates it will be at least 3 weeks before the bureaucracy sends her her card.

So what could she do? She borrowed her daughter's pension card and fraudulently bought a pensioner excursion ticket!

The Outraged Taxpayer should just chill out. The State's coffers are still $98.50 in the black, as DH is still paying off a $100 fine when she got busted for using an out-of-date pension card for similar reasons earlier this year.

Decisions, Decisions! Pacific Island Cruise, Newstart vs Carer's Payment: which would you choose?

Yeah right. That's what DH chooses too. But as she doesnt even have the bus fare to Manly, she'll take one of the latter two.

The dilemma.: Should DH apply for Newstart now and go through the indignities of the dole diary, plus a possible 3 week period without payment while DH's pitiful holiday pay (about $850 net) peters out, or should she go for Carer's payment, which pays more, won't harass her as much, and is non-taxable, but risk another 12 week* wait with only $82 a fortnight income the whole time which is what happened last August when her previous job ended. Not to mention having to haul her daughter before the expensive medical specialist who knows her case (2 month waiting list) (and who chooses not to bulk bill).

Day 6. DH's termination pay not in account. Dire consequences predicted...

With only $35 left in her account, DH has been hanging out desperately for her final pay.

To her shock, it wasnt in her account this morning.

Ringing her company's accountant, she was informed that, being a termination payment, she was getting a cheque in lieu of the usual direct depost.

DH is very upset because her direct debit to HCF (health insurance) will now bounce, incurring a $35 bank fee. Plus her medications ran out a couple of days ago and she can't afford to replace them. This will mean a great deal of discomfort, though she expects to live...

She does not like to borrow from friends. It's the same old story, the ones who are generous are also poor. The ones who have money have psychic barriers that DH can't hope to scale. She finds it all very humiliating.

WIth only $30 in her account, plus about $70 left of her daughter's disability pension ($330 a fortnight) its going to be a tough week!

Day 2: DH helps to bring a new little houso into the world

DH put her money worries to one side today for one of the peak experiences that life has to offer. She was incredibly honoured to be asked to assist at the birth of one of her friends' children.

Although she is utterly overwhelmed, blissed out, high on oxytocin, fatigued, and in love with the new bub, DH cannot resist drawing a lesson from this awesome event.

The newborn is half Irish-Australian, half Polynesian-Australian.

The Godmothers are Aboriginal-Australian and Jewish-Australian.

The Doctors in the delivery room were by the looks of them, Anglo-Australian, Japanese-Australian, and Chinese-Australian.

The Theatre nurses and Midwives were English-Australian, Anglo-Australian, Of-Middle-Eastern-Appearance-Australian, and Indian-Australian.

And just to round off the atmosphere of ethnic and religious harmony, DH spent a long time in the waiting room overcoming her tendancy to xenophobia in conversation with a nice young Muslim-Australian waiting to operated on after an industrial accident.

All this mixed multitude is the "real" Australia, living and working together in harmony.

Now why can't it always be like this?

Day 1: ... and already, the bungling begins ...

DH rings Centrelink to advise her intention to claim a welfare payment. Advised by poorly-trained young Centrelink call centre worker to apply for Newstart rather than Carer's Payment because Newstart pays more!!!

Oh dear. News for Centrelink staff. Newstart pays about $100 less than Carer's Payment, and is taxable to boot.

But let's put this down to human error and move on, it's only day 1 after all.

Day 0: Unemployed again!

Balance Sheet: Ezybanking: $35.50 CR. Mastercard $1418.15 DR; Daughter's account: $93.68 Cash on hand; ~$15 + half a jar of 5 and 10 cent pieces. Investments: Nil. Car: Nil.

DH is unemployed again as of today.

Alas, lest she find herself in breech of some arcane new Kafkalink ruling, she must draw a veil of mystery over the circumstances of her severance, and can only say that her contract ended.

However, let her whisper the words "Work Disincentive" in your shell-like. There wasn't much financial carrot in the job, once D'oH had had their cut, once she lost her pensioner subsidies on things like transport and medications, (whose main purpose was to keep her tottering off to work in the first place).

See "$181 a week. How far can you stretch it?" below. She was only a few dollars better off than she was on the Carer's Pension, except that she was perpetually exhausted, and stressed out to boot, since her caring duties had not lessened one whit.

So since she baulked on the carrot of "Welfare to Workhouse", let Centrelink do its worst with the stick.

As a service to the public DH will be faithfully charting her descent through the

9 Circles of Centrelink Hell:

Follow her, if you dare, as she passes through the Dolourous Gates marked:

Through me the way is to eternal dole*;
Abandon all hope, o, ye who enter here.

LET THE BUNGLING BEGIN!

* Of crse, Dante meant a different kind of dole, but it seems prophetic anyhow

Scary scenario: If DH was in the private market rental

Good news! DH's market rent has been reassessed at $25 less this year than last.

That's $370 per week for a small two bedroom townhouse in the Inner West of Sydney.

That's a fair rent relative to the current climate of crisis in housing affordability.

But it also shows how terrifying the situation is for normal low income renters. DH's contract with her current employer ends this week. She's about to join the ranks of the unemployed.

Now DH loves a good horror movie, so just to get the chills running up and down her spine, she did a few sums, to put herself in the shoes of her unfortunate fellow Aussies, low income earners who do not have a hope in hell of getting into public housing.

Newstart is set at $410 a fortnight, rent assistance about S100, and her daughter's Disability Pension at $320 per fortnight.

If DH was in the private rent market in her area, heres how it would look

Household income pw $415
Rent per week $370
------------------------------------------------------------------
Leaving $35 per week for food, utilities, fares ....
------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that's what DH calls a disincentive to leave public housing!

You poor buggers renting privately in John Howard's Brave New Australia!

You say you voted for who?????

The Scabs of Hillsong

The established churches won't touch the repellent and unChristian policies of the Howard Government.

 

But you can trust Hillsong!  They're at it again! Willing to go wherever there is a buck to be made.

 

Of the $1776 (8 weeks Newstart) the Howard government will rip out of some poor unemployed single parent for microscopic breaches of the new "Welfare to the Workhouse" "reforms", $650 will go to Hillsong.

 

What for?

 

To help the self-same wretch claim back their $1776 so that they can feed their kids.

 

And that's not all, Hillsong will get a "counselling fee", no doubt well spent on counselling the poor on how to live without food for 8 weeks. Praise the Lord and pass the Bread and Water Ration.

 

 

 

Note to Hillsong:

Christians are meant to touch the scabs of the poor,

not be the scabs!

Job Network wrecked by Howard "reforms"

Remember the good old days when the "Reform" meant "Structural improvement towards a better society" instead of "Infrastructure Destruction"?

When the Howard government came in 1996, DH was horrified at the damage being wreaked. But after decades of conservative disinformation belittling anyone with a social conscience as wussy liberals and out-of-touch latte-quaffing chattering elites, DH was humble enough to consider that she and her ilk had somehow got it wrong, that somehow, however counter-intuitive it might seem, a leaner and meaner Australia would deliver a better and happier Australia.

But after 10 years of this horrid social experiment, the results are coming in, and they're not looking good.

The government's much trumpeted "Child Care" reforms have led to unaffordable and unnattainable child care. Public education is reeling, while plummy public schools waste educational funds on landscape gardening.

The Lucky Country is being turned into Workhouse Nation, with the armies of the working poor losing pay and conditions, and the middle classes hanging in by the scruff of their credit cards...

And now for the latest policy failure: DH's alltime favorite journo, Adele Horin, writes in today's SMH, that Job Network is, as was predicted way back when the Howard Brigands were trumpetting their "reforms", an inefficient nightmare in which the poor buggers on the staff have to spend more time covering their arses than looking after the unemployed

Some choice extracts from a survey of over 1100 case managers:

• JOB NETWORK staff of are sick of having to focus on the demands of the Federal Government, rather than on the needs of their clients.
• Job seekers are seen "purely as a potential outcome, not as a person in need of guidance or help"
• the focus on outcomes meant staff concentrated their efforts on the most job-ready people to the detriment of the most disadvantaged.
  
• the Dept of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) actually called the clients "stock"!
  

Nice quote: It's not unlike processing 'cattle', or should I say 'stock', which was the term DEWR sed at the start of the contract to describe their unemployed clients," another case manager said.

Charming, innit?

How much longer will Howard allow David Hicks to be tortured?

RALLY TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO

If you come, wear ORANGE

Sydney Town Hall, Saturday 15th July, 12pm.

DH apologises for this break in the steady stream of bad news about D'OH and KafkaLink. But remember that bad things happen when good people remain silent.

Sure an example needs to be made of stupid boys with more testosterone than brains, who in their naivety think that joining a terrorist organisation is the best way to build a better world.

But David Hicks has been tortured long enough.
DH's stomach turns when she reads of his years of solitary confinement in Gulag Guantanamo.

Bring the poor bugger home, for God's sake!

The mystery solved

The mystery object on the left is a transverse section of the Department of Housing's response to an account inquiry by DH, listing 6 months of rental transactions. Extraordinarily for a department that DH knows spent a fortune on a state of the art computer data warehousing system not so long ago, it appears that after decades of advances in computer technology, the Department doesn't appear to be capable of creating a simple report.
The document you see on the right is a full frontal view of the "mystery object". It's a series of screen dumps painstaking glued together by Housing Department staff. Despite their efforts, it is pretty much unintelligible, even by Department staff.

DH made the request because she has a tribunal order to pay back rent arrears at $150 a fortnight. She was just about to make another payment when it occurred to her that the debt might be paid off already. Inquiries with various housing department help lines, gave her 3 different responses, including

1. You are 4 weeks in arrears
2. That's funny. According to this you should owe us $2000 (DH nearly had a heart attack at this point.
3. You are $50 ahead

Finally, it turned out that DH was right. She was $50 ahead. Hurrah!

However: She wonders what would have happened if she was, say, learning disabled, poorly educated, unable to speak up for herself, etc etc. How long might she have gone on paying back arrears at a rate causing her serious hardship before anyone at D'oH noticed?

It's quite extraordinary that the Department's procedures and formulae for working out rent due are so arcane that their own staff must spend an hour working out something that ought to be accomplished at the push of a button!

Guessing comp clue: Think Evolution!

Since there hasn't been a single correct entry, I'm giving you hopeless mob one more pictorial clue.

Think Evolution!

No, not the the evolution of a typical housing minister from spineless jellyfish to polyp on the body politic to running dog to dragon lady/ paper tiger, though must admit it does look like it.

Clue: think evolution of DoH's state-of-the-art rental account inquiry system

Hurry. You only have one more day to win this versatile artform!

Guessing Competition: Identify the mystery object

EUUGGHH! What on EARTH is it???

• A new marine life-form
• A new logo for intellectually challenged White Supremacists
• An installation at the Sydney Biennale
• An occupational therapy project for the rehabilitation of burnt-out D'oH staff
• Creative project of the D'oH Craft Club
• D'oH standard format for a Freedom of Information request

First correct answer gets a genuine replica of the item, to hang over their mantelpiece, use as a light fitting, baby mobile, whatever.

Answer tomorrow

KafkaLink strikes again!

Readers may recall that it took DH one and a half hours to simply drop off her daughter's Pensioner Educational Supplement claim form at Centrelink. (See below, KafkaLink,where you go in to drop off a form & may never be seen again, or not in this lunchtime anyway)

Clients of Centrelink will already be ahead of this blog in anticipating the inexorable sequel.

DH's daughter rang up on Monday to ask what had happened. One hour gone from her life, before she gave up.

DH's daughter rang again on Tuesday, and finally got through after another 1/2 hour's wait.

On Wednesday, a letter arrived from Centrelink

Unfortunately, your claim for Pensioner Education Supplement lodged on the 2nd June, 2006 was not received in our processing centre. ... We apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused...

Back to square one!

$181 a week. How far can you stretch it?

Is $181 a week enough for 2 people for food, general dry goods, medical, dental, and optometrist's gap fees, shoes, toiletries, clothing, repairs, broken appliance replacements, uni fees and textbooks, stationery & computer consumables, soft furnishing wear and tear, or even such sinful luxuries as the occasional book, magazine, CD, membership, movie, latte, paper, birthday presents, a cheap dinner out,  an occasional taxi, forget about a car, forget about holidays, forget about Xmas presents.

 

Well, that's what DH and child are now living on, once DH has paid rent, privatised health costs and a few other recurring costs as listed below....

 

 

DH welcomes your budgetary advice, commiserations, abuse for her profligate ways, donations (remembering that 70 cents in your dollar go straight back to the government)

 

Or do you think she should compare herself to, say,  the citizens of most of Africa, South America, East Timor, Iraq, other Middle Eastern despotisms, PNG, North Korea, or the non-citizens of Guantanamo, and Christmas Island, or Chinese pieceworkers, or even Western Suburbs pieceworkers,  or Aboriginal women near Uluru, and just stop having such high expectations of life as a middle income earner in one of the richest countries on earth?

 

 

Tenant's Own Beaconsfield: Tapping in the tunnel?

There was DH thinking she and her fellow renters, public and private, were trapped for ever in their over-priced, ill-fitting cages, with all the weight of negative public opinion, property speculation, negative gearing, mum and dad landlords who must-be-pleased with dubious incentives never mind tenants rights, duplicitous real estate agents, Cherie Burton's questionable if not downright abusive public statements about her constituents, John Howard's roughshod riding over the working class, and the middle-class too, if only they had the sense to see it...

But then she heard, high above her, a faint tapping, and lo, it was Shelter NSW's intrepid team of housing rescue specialists, and there, right over her head (well the bits about negative gearing, institutional investment incentives and fiscal policy, were above her head, anyway) could be heard the sounds of a seminar entitled.

Private rental: how can it work for low-income renters?

and would you believe, the nation's rental situation, which had seemed hopeless, which had even DH so convinced by our Federal and State Government's line of "Sorry, no room for humans - Australia's too poor," that she was thinking of shutting up permanently and contemplating her good fortune compared to, say, the Untouchables of India.... Well, suddenly it all seemed shiftable somehow, and amenable to smart policy thinking.

But more details later of the brilliant ideas from the experts, meanwhile check out the program http://www.shelternsw.org.au/docs/fly0606sem-program.html. It was a treat!

Plenty Kava for Johnny, eh?

Seems there was plenty kava for the Howard family in their role as New Guinea plantation stooges. So that's how they got to be so relaxed and comfortable ... and forgetful....

 

Loved David Marr's expose in today's SMH! 

 

 

KafkaLink,where you go in to drop off a form & may never be seen again. or not in this lunchtime ...

Centrelink is becoming decidedly creepy, as opposed to merely being depressing.

 

In a moment of blind faith in our public institutions, DH offered to duck over to Centrelink in her lunchtime to drop off her daughter's Pension Education Supplement form.

 

Her instincts should have told her something was wrong the minute she walked in the door. Where were the usual queues of her shuffling fellow desperates? Had they been shunted out the back to be turned into Soylent Green for export? Bussed off to Christmas Island to save on rental subsidies?

 

Instead, squarely in the centre of the floor, stood a squat grey machine.... surrounded by a seated circle of silent worshippers

 

The service desks were all deserted, but collaring a passing CSO, DH was told to push the "Student Allowances button", take a ticket from the maw of the grey beast, put her feet up and wait.

 

"How wonderful", thought DH. "Instead of having to stand in a queue for 10 minutes, I get to take the weight off my feet. Maybe our Government really does care about our comfort after all. :-)"!

 

ONE HOUR later....

 

Really. No kidding! Though many had waited, few were called.

 

One hour later. DH's number finally came up

 

But when she got to the desk, it turned out her number had the WRONG PREFIX and she was in the wrong queue.

 

She was told that she should have pushed the "Pensions" button.

 

But there was no "Pensions" button!!!. Good to see Catch 22 is alive and well in our Government departments. OK, there was an "Aged Pensions" button - but it hardly covered her disabled first year Uni student.

 

Finally, 90 minutes later, DH was finally able to drop off her form and get a receipt, a procedure which in itself took 30 seconds.

 

In passing she gleaned from the poor suffering Kafkalink staff, that this system had been imposed on them from Kanberra about a month earlier, they had repeatedly informed Cyentral Commyittee, that the system did not work, that it was a nightmare, but todate, Canberra has been unmoved.

 

It's all beginning to remind DH of her travels in the former Soviet Union, where you might queue for a day in front of an unmarked door, just to be told which other unmarked door you should be queuing in front of... But surely that sort of thing can't happen here under the auspices of our free market anti-bureaucratic anti-red Government???

Open Letter to Tony Abbott

[DH is stewing over Tony Abbot's juvenile gloating in the columns of the Sydney Morning Herald of Wed "The budget delivers, even for single poets" http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/05/23/1148150250816.html in which he tells us, contrary to the bleedin' obvious, that apparently we never had it so good.]

 

Dear Tony

 

Being as how I’m a 50 something heterosexual working parent who can’t stand poetry, you can imagine how that saucy little beast, Don John Howard, is always a-courting after me, dangling his tax incentives in front of my nose, flashing his wad of bills at me, enthralling me with tables of figures and calculations that at the end of the day always seem to add up to $7, or the price of 2 Macburgers, in my pocket.

What kind of girl does he think I am? Must think all the big numbers he pulls out of his hat, and the dazzling gold coins he extracts from my ears,  blind me to how much my standard of living has actually declined since he and his miserable crew got into power.

Who do you think you’re kidding Bud?

Of that extra $4664 ($8858-$4194) per annum, you reckon I now have,  (and has that figure been adjusted to the price of bananas recently?) I now spend $2600 extra on medical insurance that I was forced to take out when your government ripped Medicare to shreds.

May I suggest to your MacBrain constituency that the $7 a week tax savings they drool over in their MacSuburbs have been extracted out of their children’s teeth, thanks to the lowest act ever perpetrated by an Australian Government: the withdrawal of funding to free dental services to school children and low-income earners.

May I suggest that the $7 extra a week hardly compensate for the thousands they must now pay for private education for their childen since your government’s rob-from-the-poor to give-to-private-schools education policy sucked our public schools dry?

And is it a pure coincidence that while government debt is at an all-time low, private debt and bankruptcy has skyrocketed and the middle-classes are cannibalising their mortgages just to pay for the self-same private education.

All your government has achieved is to privatise its debts like you’ve privatised everything else. .

Did I say mortgages?  Nice work if you can get a foot in the door.

Do you think we will be so distracted by your pathetic attempts to foment civil war between Balmain and Blacktown that those 68% of people who reportedly would prefer social service to tax cuts are fooled. Nothing divisive about you, mate.

Well, I’ve said it before and I’m proud to say it again. I’ve still never met anyone who’ll admit to being greedy enough to vote for you. And I have connections Balmain to Blacktown to the Beecroft Bible Belt.  But there you go. I guess some people can’t live with the shame of voting for an extra $7 in their pockets while your government puts children in concentration camps, terrifies us into giving up our protection against becoming a police state, bad-mouth its own scientists when they talk about global warming. Err - until yesteday … hullo … suddenly when it comes to profiting from uranium and building nuclear power plants we have a global warming problem after all!

Well, I’m so disgusted by those crypto MacLiberal voters that I for one am coming out of the closet.

Yes, I admit it!  I am the “The Elite” that you love to revile. Yes. It was me all along! Yes. I’m the one that loves a latte, have a degree, and work for a pittance in the public sector, while living high on the hog of the disability allowance of $43 a week I shamelessly bludge off the taxpayer to pay for my childs extra needs.

And to clinch it, I happen to live in Balmain. Yes I know how envious you are. So why don’t you come up and see me sometime, Big Boy, and we can have a good old chatter in my luxurious public housing townhouse,. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to the piteous wailing of  the 200,000 poor buggers still on the waiting list who press their noses up against the window crying “let us in, let us in”. At least when they.re not out there pushing rents through the roof, thanks to your Governments exacerbation of rent inflation by cutting off funding to public housing.

Just make sure you don’t trip over the Rolls in the garage, (so much a feature of public housing life these days, if our past housing minister is to be believed}. We’re buttering them for our next fundraising sausage sizzle so that our school can buy some colouring in pencils for our kids.

Earth to Planet D'OH. Come in Team-Leader.

Darlin' I've rung you half a dozen times in the last three months,but I havent heard your voice since before Xmas.  How come you never return my calls??? Is it something I've done? Are you mad at me? Pick up - I know you're out there somewhere. Dont be such a stranger!

 

Do the people who answer the phone at Planet D'oH actually pass on messages? Does the budget run to paper and pencil? Does the computer they peck away at actually connect to anything?

 

It's a mystery!

FURIOUS! DH loses days work as contractor fails to show up. AGAIN!

DH is FURIOUS! And she just KNEW it in her bones. She took a day off work because contractors made an appointment to come today to do some kind of inventory on the repairs needed. She had that feeling of tragic inevitability this morning, so she dialled her local office to check.

 

Can you believe how this office works?????

 

The local office knows N-N-N-NOTHING. .

 

They do not know what contractors are scheduled to do what when.

 

There is no-one they can ring to find out. They simply have no idea.

 

Poor buggers. You have to feel sorry for the workers in the frontline administering this nightmare - no doubt understaffed, undertrained, undervalued and underfunded.

 

 

DH wants your advice. Shd she give up her private health insurance?

DH has been clinging onto increasingly exorbitant private health insurance cover by the fingernails.

But for the 3rd time in 6 months, she couldnt afford to meet HCF's direct debit this month. There goes another $35 in bank dishonour fees ... (See NCOSS report on how the poor pay more for everything through late fees)

 

Should DH give up health insurance? She had to go in for a standard surgical procedure a few months back. Her specialist wanted to charge her about $550. As DH gets top cover, she thought, foolish mortal that she is, that she had no worries and could lie back and be pampered in St Vincent's Private. This is the first time, since the abysmal Howard brought in semi-compulsory private insurance, that DH has tried to use her hospital cover. What a shock awaited her. HCF only refund about $80. So after spending thousands over the years on private cover, DH found herself back in the public hospital queue. What's goin' ON????

Budget surplus extracted from our teeth

Costello and Howard can gloat about their huge budget surpluses, but isn't it bleedin' obvious that all they've done is privatised debt? We used to have private savings and public health and dentistry. Now the middle classes are eating up their credit cards and cannibalising their mortgages, while the poor can't even chew, thanks to the lowest act of all by the Liberals, their ruthless decision to cut funding to dental services. And so much for interest rates not going up! Though DH is delighted - one of the advantages of not having a mortgage, is that now instead of earning 2 cents a year interest on her Commonwealth Savings account, she'll earn 2.0003 cents.