What now that the Maintenance Tsunami has washed over?

... leaving this, and at least another,  estate DH knows about,  repainted twice (for shoddy work the first time) ... despite being made of treated synthetic planking which should never have been painted in the first place but will now have to be painted for evermore. .

An ex-employee of Spotless during the stimulus tsunami tells DH that Spotless was in chaos at the time, being totally unprepared for the deluge. DH had 3 different very young project managers within a couple of months, each one shocked at the work done by the previous mob. And HNSW wanted to redo her bathroom on inspection, but DH had had enough, would rather live with a bit of shoddiness than have the whole place turned upside down by a new set of contractors and their hurriedly conscripted and untrained rellos ...

OK, enough negativity, but it's been a long time between sprays. And always remember the buck stops with the government of the day. There's a lot of good people in HNSW, doing what they can with the budgets and priorities allocated to them.

And in DH's experience the contractors were all really nice, and many did excellent work. Economists will be arguing forever about whether the stimulus package's "Just do it, never mind the quality" philosophy saved the nation. It's a pity that there wasn't enough time to scope the work properly.

And now, dear Gd,  we have a Liberal Government, not noted for their philosophy of mercy towards suspected unproductive swill.

So what's happening with maintenance today?

Budgets are increasingly restricted. What money there is will be diverted to major infrastructure projects, e.g. replacing deteriorating plumbing , sewage, ageing gas lines. Handovers to Community Housing to continue apace of course. The PAS (Property Assessment Surveys) are things of the past. If it ain't an emergency and it's not part of planned maintenance, which will happen who knows when, DH opines that you should not waste your time ringing the HNSW Call Centre 1300 Housing as there is nothing much left in the maintenance kitty.

The terribly nice people there (and it is with pleasure that DH reports that the call centre team has increased in size, and waiting times are down), will tell you the same thing at great and somewhat obscurantist length and then offer to pass your request onto your local office. DH is not saying a word about what is likely to happen then. But, hey, try your luck.

What are the Liberals up to?

Meanwhile the Liberals in their wisdom, or perhaps in their desire to be seen to be different, bold and decisive, have decided to to decisively hack the hell into HNSW and split it between two Departments: Family and Community Services under the pleasant though clearly lightweight Pru Goward, while Assets is moving to the Dept of Finance and Services, under the Minister known as Greg Pearce.  This is to happen in October and no-one has the slightest clue how it will play out. Pru Goward's keynote speech at the Shelter Conference  may give us some clues. If memory serves, she believes in motherhood, looking after the genuinely weak, and she encourages our (underfunded) NGO's to be really creative and think up something quick because certainly no ideas were forthcoming from her.

How this split into two can possibly be a good idea is anyone's guess. Think of the working parties to delineate the demarcations that are bound to spring up. Think of all the solutions that happen through chance meetings in corridors and by coffee machines that can't happen when the two arms of an organisation are compartmentalised and geographicallly separated. And, of course, the stationary costs...

Sylvia Hale deserts housos for Excellent Middle-Eastern Adventure

Retired NSW Greens Housing Spokesperson to announce ambitious plan to rehouse 7 Million "refugees" in Israel?



All Hale, Sylvia! Saviour of the Fleet

Retired NSW Greens housing spokesperson, Sylvia Hale has apparently accepted a post as Turkey's emissary to Israel.  In a flotilla initiated by Turkish Islamists, she is planning to breach the borders of the only halfway democratic state in the Middle East on a batty crusade to rehouse 7 million so-called Palestinian refugees in a land that is 1/3 the size of Tasmania!



You may recall that during its stimulus package splurge, the Australian Government expended $5 Billion to build just over 19,000 affordable housing units across our vast nation. And that's the most the Lucky Country can afford despite raking in gazillions in mining royalties.  Actually ... whatever happened to that? ...

Yet housing expert Hale obviously has a plan up her sleeve for housing all 7 million of  em'!  DH is waiting with bated breath for its release. If only she had applied such genius to NSW's housing shortage instead of joining this Flotilla of Fools!

The Dibley Branch of the NSW Labor Party: A Memoir

By offering this memoir of her life as political spakfilla in the Dibley Branch of the NSW Labor Party, DH hopes to be right there in the rearguard behind such influential party reformers as John Button, Rodney Cavalier, and John Faulkner.


Dibley Branch rank and file.
The good old days when
we still had a quorum.

She can think of no better background reading for this searing expose than Button's 2002 Quarterly Essay, Beyond Belief: What Future for Labor?  Cavalier's  Power Crisis: The Self-Destruction of a State Labor Party, and Faulkner's Neville Wran Lecture


The above works may give the impression that the ALP consists of Dibley branches all the way down, but such is not the case. DH's branch must take the honours, being generally considered to be, arguably, the very grandaddy of all ALP branches in our great state.


So how did DH's career as a backbrancher, doorknocker and how-to-vote leaflet-thruster begin, and why did she abandon ship?

It's easy to answer the latter. As a houso, DH is already a member of a despised and stigmatised minority. To compound the odium by easy identification as NSW Labor branch memeber is more than any one human being can be expected to bear.

As to how DH decided to join the party: It certainly was not that she was "A True Believer", which she came to see as a rallying call for working-class Catholics devised by middle-class Romantics. Not being either of the above, DH doesn't believe in belief.

It all began when she got the offer of public housing far away from the worst block of flats in the worst street of the silvertail suburb she would have liked to have grown up in. Deposited with DH Junior in the wilds of the Inner West, for the sake of sheer survival, she needed to plug into the local goss toot sweet.  


The quickest route to being-in-the-know was obviously to join a party: the Greens, Labor, whatever. Well, not the Liberals. There were still limits in those days, now sadly hard to distinguish.

Her quest for the good oil began with the local ALP. Come the nth Tuesday of the month, donning a fetching red bandanna, she poked her nose around the corner of Dibley Town Hall's Small Meeting Room.

Well, friends, DH found herself gasping. "OMIGODDDDDDDDD!!!! THIS is Australia's major political party??? This round-up of the red-nosed denizens of the Tiddler's Arms? This feeble handful of bearded loons from the local mariner's rest? These hairy ladies? No, sorry, that last was DH spotting her own reflection mirrored in portraits of aldermen gone by. But let's not overlook the party's youth wing: a thug or two in reverse base-ball caps, casing the joint for the possibility fetching up in a safe Labor seat.

And presiding over all, the new Member for Dibley, a smart babe with a bob-cut and saint-like reserves of patience.

"OMiGod", thought DH, "if ever an assemblage was ripe for the picking by a consortium of white-shoed mafiosi and property developers, this it!  Why, our major party is seriously at risk of being totally white-anted from within!!!”.   Being totally clueless and out of touch with contemporary politics, she did not realise that it had already happened.   And so it came to pass that without a moment's hesitation, DH threw to the winds all thoughts of taking the moral high ground by joining the Greens!  Her country needed her!  She would single-handedly, if needs be, wrest back the ALP for the underprivileged!

Of course, things were not always as they seemed. The bearded loons, on the whole, turned out to be erudite and charming. The young thugs were, to a lad, idealistic children of the middle-classes, and who could begrudge them their romantic fantasies of being working-class heroes? And as for the tipplers, DH diagnosed most of them as self-medicated aspies, trying to get through a life made difficult by too much intelligence married to an insufficiency of social front. As a sometime Asperger's advocate  DH is allowed to say such things.  

And there was not even any point lying in wait with a rolling-pin for the whiteshoe brigade. They never ventured into Dibley, which was earmarked as a play-pen for the remnants of the Left, a necessary escape hatch that allowed them to dream on.


Fortunately, the branch had only two factions, the Droners, and the Bletherers.

So DH never got to be in the know. If texting hadn't been invented she would have slept through most of the meetings. Interminable hours were taken up debating technological matters that practically no-one present was competent to judge. Who was she (or anyone else lacking an engineering or economics degree), to evaluate the need for a desalination plant, the intricacies of the national electricity grid (or was it market?)... Actually DH does have a part economics degree, but it was only in Political Economy, useless in any practical sense, when you consider it's the same education that Michael Costa and Antony Albanese had.

It was not always thus. Believe it or not, DH is no longer the smart young thing you see cradled in the arms of a raw prawn on your right. No, way back in the seventies, she was already a member of this selfsame branch until rising rents forced her out of the 'hood. Way back then, each branch meeting was stacked to the rafters with ambitious 30 somethings: bristling with barristers, slithering with silks. The halls echoed with economists and tottered under the sheer mass of Trotskyite entryists. The rule-book was used like a football. Pre-meeting strategies were drawn up, lawyers took up positions on the playing field and controlled the meeting by passing points of order to each other at breakneck speed. With such brilliance on display, mere teachers, academics, and public servants rarely managed to get a word in edgewise.

And always there were the queues, those g-ddamn queues,  snaking around the corner and upstairs for credentialling:  Peter Baldwin's leftie army of gentrifiers jostling against joblots of the right's bully boys rounded up from the local pub, the Branch-Stackers Arms. It was all about saving Dibley from High Rise Developments. Or anyhow that was how it was explained to DH, who being a clueless young stackee, had absolutely no idea what was going on. It all culminated on that infamous night when the meeting room lights suddenly went out,  something heavy crashed through a window in a shower of broken glass, and ...

... to be continued

Waiting for the Tenant Messiah



The Handing Down of the First Draft Tenant Participation
Framework Consultation Paper

 Oh ye of little faith. Didst thou think HNSW had hidden Its face from thee forever? Didst though think that rumours of the advent of the Draft Tenant Participation Framework Consultation Paper of 2008 was merely a chimera*

Then sing Hallelujah! For it has come to pass that with the last of the stimulus manna consumed, the heavenly gates of Housing NSW Ashfield have once more reopened for core business.


And lo they have released yet another blueprint for the New Jerusalem, which they call the Draft Tenant Engagement Framework Consultation Paper 2011

 

The Handing Down of the 2nd, 3rd,
4th, and nth drafts ad infinitum



But verily DH sayeth unto thee, these flimsy frameworks will avail you naught, for lest a Tenant Messiah arises from amongst you, your consults will be as the dust, which blows hither and thither and settles not, neither will ye dwell in a peaceful habitation, let alone in quiet enjoyment of secure tenure.

At best you will score a free cup of International Roast, some assorted creme biscuits and if you're lucky, the bus fare home.  

In short, without an independent tenants' union, consults will come and go, but you will never get past the 2nd of the 5 gates of Tenant Consultation Purgatory, viz:

1. Information:
2. Consultation:
3. Involvement:
4. Collaboration: 
5. Empowerment: In your dreams...

For you don't get what you don't fight and organise for, and wherefore shouldst HNSW be expected to organise its own opposition against itself?

And how on earth is this Independent Social Housing Tenants Union to be formed out of the mixed multitude of "those most in need"? DH sees no way forward unless a leader arises from within the tenant body with the energy to unite, motivate and hone us into an effective independent force. 



*Chimera: (n): a grotesque monster of diverse parts,  often depicted with the head of a bean-counter and the body of a social worker.    

Gillard still waltzing to Howard's tune.

Now that Labor's welfare-bashing budget has been unveiled, the identity of the mystery couple in the previous post can be revealed.

Disgusting, innit?

Valentine: Happy 15th Anniversary HNSW, love, DH.

DH has only ever received one Valentine's day gift in her sad,  unloved life. And that was from Housing NSW in 1996.

Yes, today is the 15th Anniversary of the date she took up residence in the only secure accommodation she has ever known! 
That is why, for all their faults, she will adore HNSW forever. They are the best Landlord in NSW!

(And, no, this touching pas-de-deux is not an accurate representation of DH's relationship with the Director-General). 

The Sharia Law component of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010

I terminate thee, I terminate thee, I terminate thee


Under the new act, landlords still retain a unilateral right to evict tenants as per classical Sunni Sharia Divorce Law.


What, you may ask, does DH know abt Sharia law? Not much, but she found the subtleties on Wikipedia.


DH thought Western law was considered to be an advance on classical Sharia law, but there you go...

So:

WHAT DO WE WANT?

• "No Grounds Terminations" by landlords terminated
• Compensation for tenants who are terminated because a landlord wishes to speculate on the property, including the cost of removal, and compensation for stress, loss of work time, disruption of children's schooling, loss of accrued social capital (neighbourhood friendships)
• Failing this, at the very least, a right by tenants to "No Grounds Termination" with no more penalty than landlords suffer

WHEN DO WE WANT IT?

• By amendment. ASAP!

WHAT ARE OUR CHANCES OF GETTING IT UNDER A LIBERAL GOVT?

• Shut up, Sunshine,  and keep packing...

 

The Act is dead! Hail to the new Residential Tenancies Act 2010.

The point, however,  is to continuously improve it!

Today, 31st Jan 2011, the old Residential Tenancies act will be replaced by the 2010 Act

Overall, there are a lot of improvements for private tenants, and DH refers you to an excellent wrap at the Tenant Union's blog The Brown Couch

The good bits include:

• regulation of tenant databases (those evil repositories of haphazard misinformation that shafted you the way credit rating databases can, but without half the transparency)
• protection of tenancies in some cases where domestiv violence is an issue
• better protection for tenants in share-housing arrangements
• fee-free’ options for paying rent (can you believe landlords had the option of making you pay to be able to pay your rent.)
• longer notice periods for ‘no-grounds’ termination notices...
  which bring us to the bad bits....

The BAAAAAD bits

Like, how on earth, in a country like Australia, can landlords decide on a whim, to force you to move at any time it suits them??? And yet not so much as pay for your removal costs, not to mention compensation for time lost at work, stress, interruptions to your children's education, loss of social capital (that's "friendly neighbours", but sounds impressive if filing a complaint to anyone who will listen)

For factsheets explaining your rights as a tenant, see www.tenants.org.au. If you run into trouble, contact your local Tenants Advice & Advocacy Service (details also at www.tenants.org.au)

Happy {Invasion/Australia} Day, Girtrude!

 By all means, rejoice, Girtrude, if you:

• are young (and preferably slim)
• free (at least outside business hours and on weekends)
• can afford a plot of golden soil
• earn at least minimum award rate wealth for your toil
• own your own mining conglomerate

  

That's if you're not an Aboriginal mourning Invasion Day, or one of the 5% of Aussies who can't find toil no matter how often they rewrite their resumes, or how many Cert IV's and Statements of Attainment they achieve  



Of crse, some who rejoice on
Australia Day are yet to hear
the bad news..

This includes people over 50, disabled people, people with borderline mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities who are not defined as disabled, trying to live on $235 a week for a single person.   

 

Bad luck too for the 1 in 10 Australians below the poverty line, that's 2 million Aussies, baby!

Not even going to bore you again with the depressing stats on homelessness in "The Lucky Country". See previous post 

PS. For those of you who come by sea, sorry, we appear to have run out of boundless plains...Please refer to the Minister for Sustainability for further instructions



But seriously, we are all blessed with a beautiful country, so  let's work together to make Australia Truly Fair!

Bottom-line: Wishing housing tragics a Grin-and-Bear-It New Year

Be happy if you can, but it would seem excessively chirpy for DH to be skipping around wishing a Happy Smiley New Year to the: 

• 1,100,000 Australian families in housing stress (ie paying more than 1/3 of gross income on housing)
• 100,000 homeless
• 175,000 on public housing waiting lists
• 49,000 on community housing waiting lists
• 10,000 on Aboriginal housing waiting lists *

Credit should be given to Federal Labor during Tanya Plibersek's tenure as Housing Minister, for their attempts to reverse the housing neglect of the Howard years.

Unfortunately you can't reverse 10 years' neglect in one.  But Labor has given it a game effort via the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which subsidises developers prepared to offer homes at 20% below market rent. 

And they have committed $5.6 billion to the Nation Building Stimulus Plan (Housing) which is expected to deliver 19,600 new homes, of which 10,000 were completed by Xmas 2010.

So a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to the 10,000 lucky ones, and chin up to the rest!

The stimulus tsunami has rolled over, start bailing...

Credit should also go to Housing NSW for turning around on a pinhead, and pushing through the Federal government's stringent and high pressure, use-it-or-lose-it demands. It's been a tough year and you can't entirely blame nimbyism for opposition to construction without time for prior consultation.

* The data refers to all Australia, rounded to the nearest 1,000, cited in Shelter NSW Housing Australia fact sheet. Based on the 2006 census or later depending on availability. Check the link for accurate years.  

B-b-but I'm a middle-class granny...

Or, from pillar of respectability to homeless old harridan in just 6 weeks. 

Try it yourself. Stare for a while
and this middle-class matron
will turn into a
homeless old harridan




You don't have to have an honours degree in Sociology* to figure out why the face of homelessness is looking more female and wrinkly.

Women still earn less than men. Our careers are often interrupted by child-rearing and caring, thus our earning capacity is further lowered. Single women in rented accommodation have very little left over for savings. 

If we're over 50 and lose our jobs, our chances of re-employment can be computed by an algorithm involving Buckley's times the number of snowflakes in hell less our chances of marrying a terrorist trying to hijack our bus to Centrelink.  

With Newstart set at an appalling $235 a week, it's not long before we're in rent arrears. After just 2 weeks rent arrears, (unless our landlord is some kind of bleedin' heart traitor to their class), there'll be a termination notice in the mail. It's possible to hang on for a another couple of weeks by appealing to the CTTT (the Tribunal), but if you can't demonstrate your ability to pay up, you're out on your ear, old dear!

Nice way to treat the nation's mothers! And that's just if you are a mother. If not, you won't even be able to experience the joy of couch-surfing at the kids' place trying not to look like a mother-in-law joke.

* Of course, if you particularly want to be an older unemployed person, DH can certainly recommend an  honours degree in sociology. That's exactly how she got where she is today.

BMW cavalcade to escort Tripodi from parliament



If like DH, you own a black BMW, join her in a cavalcade to escort ex-Housing Minister, Joe Tripodi, from Parliament and make sure he never returns. Please spread the word to all the other BMW owners on the estate.

In 2005, Tripodi presided over the disastrous "Reshaping Public Housing" policy, engineered by Ben Keneally, Kristina's husband, which increased the stigma and ghettoisation of public housing by further concentrating disadvantage, by dumping more mentally ill people in public housing, when the necessary supports were not, (and are still not*!)  in place. By way of amelioration, it was a response to John Howard's cutting a couple of $ billion from the then Commonwealth State Housing Agreement which funded public housing, and putting it into the pockets of private landlords via rental assistance, thus increasing inflation, and contributing to the current housing crisis.*

Whatever the exigencies were that created the policy, what was galling was the gutter tactics Tripodi resorted to in order to sell it to the NSW public. He chose to attack the public housing tenants who were under his protection, by the famous claim that the car parks of public housing estates were full of BMW's. This started a trend then trumpeted by every right-wing Housing Minister thereafter: his hapless proteges Cherie Burton and Matt Brown. See The BMW's that ate Public Housing in the SMH for more.

It fell to David Borger, who had a genuine vision for urban regeneration, to begin to undo the shoddy work and it was pleasing to note that the BMW claims have not resurfaced since.

... more on Tripodi

* See NCOSS press release: Still no guarantee of service for tenants with mental health needs

* Worried am only the faceless man's nameless troll. Must get facts right! Rental assistance begun by Hawke govt. Labor used to claim that Howard ripped $3 billion out of CSHA over 10 years. Later the figure quoted became a mere $1 billion. Am settling for a fuzzy "couple" of billion. DH.

David Hicks: Martyrdom Lite or "Better Read than Dead"

[Wonder how many low-rent types have been housed since the stimulus and the NRAS (National Housing Affordability Scheme)? While awaiting results, pls allow DH the pleasure of pontificating on national security.]\

Move over Mary McKillop. David Hicks is our First Aussie Martyr.

David, Islamic martyrs are supposed to die for their cause. You're doing Martyrdom Lite, or is it Martyrdom, Aussie style?. Martydom lite's credo:  "better read than dead"

DH never thought she'd agree with John Howard on anything,  but Hicks is no hero. He chose to learn to kill and go against Australia's national interest. There's a name for people who do that, and it's severely punished by even the most enlightened nations. Hicks paid the price for being a traitor. It's meant to be food for thought for any hot-heads who want to follow in his footsteps. Sadly for him, he was made an example of.


Correction

Clearly, DH should stop pontificating on national security without doing more research. Let no-one say she is rigid in her beliefs, for ...  as "Himself" points out (in comments below):

This is nonsense. Hicks 'learnt to kill' yes, but only in the context of being a soldier. He never trained as a terrorist. He was involved in a civil war in the Balkans and a civil war in Afghanistan. The Taliban were at this time the defacto government of Afghanistan, not a terrorist organisation in the strict sense. It was only with September 11 that Hicks's association with the Taliban became a point where he could be accused of criminal association, and this preposterously given that the Taliban have never been directly linked to September 11 by anyone.

DH is hanging her head in shame, and will leave this post up as an ongoing testament to her folly.

Let DH make one thing perfecty clear, Guantanamo was itself a war crime with many innocents incarcerated, and Bush and his henchmen should be indicted. Terrorists are also war criminals and should be treated the same way.

But DH is sorry for assuming David Hicks was guilty on the basis of lies emanating from the Bush administration.

Just because he was a stupid d*ckhead conspiracy theorist who said vile racist things about Jews, and aided and abetted that enlightened band of proto-feminists, the Taliban, does not justify 5 years in hell. Public contempt and perhaps some Shariah justice would suffice - say a light stoning, cutting off his trigger finger, two years in isolation in a hole in the ground in Beirut, if not a beheading for being unfortunate enough to be an unconverted Anglo straying into the wrong territory.

OK, OK, two wrongs dont make a right... the end.

Aux Armes, Citoyens Anglos Toothlesses, the French aren't taking it lying down.

Mark Weisbrot, the Guardian: By taking
to the streets to defend their pension
rights from regressive cuts,the French
are fighting for all our benefits*

George Monbiot comments in the Guardian: For the Conservatives, this is not a financial crisis but a long-awaited opportunity: In a classic example of 'disaster capitalism', the cuts are being used to reshape the economy in the interests of business – and to trash the public sector.

At least the French aren't falling for it. Mon dieu,  they're not going gently into the good night of eternal Newstart as the retirement horizon recedes forever into the distance. While Lily-livered Labor does nothing to prosecute age discrimination.

By gum, by DH's toothless old gum (we lost universal dental care in 1996 under Howard, and never got it back, remember?) we Aussies have become a nation of whipped and toothless curs by comparison.

The Marseillaise still says it all (freely translated by DH):

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,	What does this horde of toadies,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?	Of traitors and spinned up political pretenders want?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,	For whom are these ignoble shackles,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ? (bis)	These long-prepared fetters? (repeat)
Français, pour nous, ah ! quel outrage	Ordinary Aussies, that's who, ah! what outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter !	What fury it should arouse!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer	It is we whom they dare plan
De rendre à l'antique esclavage !	To return to ancient slavery!



* Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images. From Sarkozy Should Resign by Mark Weisbrot, The Guardian

Let them eat Cert IV's: recipes for make celebrate Anti-Poverty Week in Glorious Lucky Nation of Australia

It's no wonder that Australia's charities are calling for urgent government subsidies to help Australians struggling with hunger  ... oops... don't mention the "H" word ... that only happens in the USA... In Glorious Lucky Country food insecurity much more reassuring and not frighten horses.

According to Australia's largest hunger relief organisation, Food Bank, an estimated 2 million Australians do not have enough food to eat, while one million children go to school without breakfast, or to bed without dinner! If you find this hard to believe, check it out on ABC News.

Meanwhile, talking about 2 million, a report just released by the Salvos shows that  2 million Australians are living in poverty.  Wonder if it's the same 2 million?

No wonder, when Lily-livered Labor has done bugger-all for the 610,000 unemployed and 837,000 underemployed Australian citizens on Newstart, John Howard's miserable Oldidea for plenty of stick and never you mind the carrot.

The Newstart benefit for a married couple with two children is $97.00 per week below the poverty line, whilst for a single person it's $118.00 per week below.  That's just $235 a week, and maybe $50 rent assistance, folks.

But if the remnants of the Labor Left get any wet, wimpy, big-hearted ideas, Tony Abbott just has to start pounding his hairy simian chest: "Bom Bom Bom,  A Great Big Tax", and Labor goes all limp at the knees.

The best response Mary-Antoinette Macklin's  Ministry for Social Inclusion seems able to come up with is "Let them eat Cert IVs".   Just what we need: Mickey Mouse training courses for non-existent jobs.

Maybe someone should tell Mary-Antoinette that there are 4 people looking for every job available.

Mark Arbib: Senator for Bread and Circuses.. (and Fergedabout-da-Homeless?)

Winners are grinners while homeless
queues grow.  Pic lifted from
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/

The ABC's Q&A which,  in this infotainment age, appears to be our most prominent arbiter of what's important to the nation, features this Monday, Senator Mark Arbib, denoted simply as the "Minister for Sport". 

Oy!?!! What about his other portfolios: housing, homelessness, aboriginal employment and community development?  Don't these rate anymore?

But why worry? The stimulus package fixed all that, didn't it?  Didn't you listen to Labor's subliminal election slogan "IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON"?   As long as there's flour, sugar, tea and sports spectaculars, who cares? After all, most people can still afford bread, or at least get a serve at a soup kitchen. And the middle classes, or what's left of them,  couldn't give a damn, so well are they pandered to by Q&A which bowdlerises public discourse and turns politicians into lovable buffoons, 

What does it mean that the Ministry of Housing under the Left's Tanya Plibersek has been subsumed back into Jenny Macklin's FAHCSIA, while the Right's Mark Arbib takes up the rump: social housing? Should we start worrying? Having proved successful in chopping off the fingers of any asylum seekers still clinging to lifeboats, is the current management of Fortress Australia  now turning its attention to casting adrift its own underclass?

Lizards, they say, cast off their own tails to save their skins when pursued by predators. Is Australia, pursued by the predatory practices of globalisation throwing off its own underclasses? Has trying to house the masses proved to be too difficult?

DH has not been able to unearth a single pronouncement yet by Mark Arbib about the direction of Social Housing. 

Tanya Plibersek meanwhile has given birth to baby Louis, and will be out of action for 3 weeks before resuming her roles as Minister for Human Services (eg Centrelink) and Social Inclusion. Can hardly wait to ask Tanya how people paid just $235 a week unemployment benefits are going to be "included" in anything when they can't even get out of the house. Tanya, people on unemployment benefits are effectively under financial house arrest, which is what happens when you spend everything on rent, flour, sugar, tea and utilities in the first week and run out of money for a bus fare (which NSW doesn't even subsidise for unemployed people).

Question for QandA      

DH has submitted the following to Q&A:                                                                                                



Senator Arbib, has Federal Labor downgraded social housing and Aboriginal employment by putting them below sport in your list of portfolios? Can we relax and assume the housing crisis is over, and should the homeless be content with bread and circuses?

Open Letter to Scott Morrison

DH is a regular recipient of Cookmail, the newsletter of Scott Morrison, currently Shadow Minister for all things immigration and population control. She met him on the historic occasion when she popped into Canberra during his stint as Shadow Housing Minister. She found him lacking in knowledge or understanding of housing issues, but personable and willing to listen. Perhaps his lack of understanding was due to his newness in the role. Besides, at that time, the Liberals were wedded to a very simplistic line on the housing crisis that they had so miserably failed to foresee or prevent during their decade of power. The Lib's simple mantra: blame the states for not releasing more land...  

Morrison to the rescue!
Safeguarding our borders

Mr Morrison's newsletter solicited  feedback, so DH couldn't resist the opportunity to influence Liberal Party policy. Here is her advice:

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

Dear Scott Morrison,

Thank you for sending me your newsletter and request for feedback. As I consider you to be one of the more balanced members of the Liberal Party, I am pleased to give you a response.

Let me say that I was very disappointed by the Liberal Party's election tactics. In fairness though it was the Australian public who shocked me for responding so strongly to the negative campaign run by Tony Abbott.

From my perspective, the campaign pandered to the most ignorant and resentful members of the public. It lacked all substance, with figures in billions of $$$ plucked out of thin air, and a mish-mash of back-to-the-future and wild-leaps-into-the-unknown policies, chopped and changed to suit the moment.

I am now appalled to find that the Liberal Pary has switched from the nonsensical enough idea of being "kind and gentle" to an all out determination to destabilise the Australian government. We need an effective opposition to raise important, well-researched questions on the feasibility of the NBN, on a continuation of efforts to create affordable public and private housing. We need a serious debate about sustainable population growth and humane treatment of asylum seekers. We need to make up our minds whether people on welfare benefits should be at least lifted to the poverty line, or whether we should jettison them into a new caste of untouchables. And as a former Home Sustainability Assessor (unemployed), I am keen to see that an effective opposition keeps tabs on Labor's management of ambitious projects.

Instead, what we are hearing from people like Messrs Abbott, Hockey and Pine, is a barrage of sledging, wrecking and personal attacks reminiscent of the tactics of the mean girls at my high school.

I hope you will be a force for an Opposition committed to the long-term good of the nation rather than a short-term grab for power at any price.

Regards

DH

Welcome to Social Housing, Ya Arbibi... And where's Tanya?

Trust me on this. A housing
offer you can't refuse.

Ummm... is this a demotion for Arbib, Housos, or both?

Does it mean mo' betta social housing, or the opposite? 

If Arbibi is poll-driven, he'll be wanting to get rid of us all, such is the general hatred whipped up against housos by a succession of the luminaries of the NSW Right: Housing Ministers of the calibre of Joe Tripodi, Cherie Burton, and the Right Honourable Mr Fancy Pants.

DH excludes David Borger, and was sorry to see him go, for he had a genuine vision for social housing and urban regeneration.

The current minister Terenzini remains an unknown quantity, as measured by the flatlining of excitement levels generated in the housing sector.

But back to Mark Arbib. If he want to get rid of us, though, surely he can't knife all of us in the back, can he? Not here in Australia?

DH proposes a protest cavalcade of BMW's stretching all the way from Airds to Canberra, to nip in the bud any plans to ship us all off to Christmas Island.

And where's Tanya?

And has the Ministering Angel of Housing,  Tanya Plibersek, been kicked, cajoled, nudged, or invited, upstairs, downstairs, or sideways?

Can anyone who understand the workings of the constant ministry renamings and rebadgings enlighten us?

Some vignettes of working class life.

Just a couple of stories DH heard this week.

Case 1.

Started chatting with a saleswoman at one our biggest electronic retailers, who shall remain unnamed. Let's call them HN. On her feet from 10.30 till 7pm, with just 30 mins off work and no tea break. She has just left an abusive husband, and moved into a flat at $280 a week with her two primary school aged kids.
Has a 1.5 hour commute each way.

Her wages? $15.75 and hour.

Case 2.

A building worker in his 50's. No job security. Contracting. Very fit for his age, but worried about what will happen if he can't keep going. Would like to be more involved in his community but too exhausted at the end of the day. Does a lot of driving. Is terrorised by speed cameras, and now mobile cameras. Can't relax - a momentary lapse or two, and he could lose his livelihood.

Meanwhile over there in the Ministry of Social Inclusion, Tanya Plibersek's new portfolio, you might think that it's all about being nice to people, and designing brochures about how not to diss people with disabilities. Not at all. It's all about how to pressgang Aussies into similar low paid stressful jobs.

Apparently, the underlying principle of Social Inclusion is "Arbeit Macht Frei"

Mark Arbib, Minister for Social Housing... he can't knife all of us in the back ... can he?

If Arbibi is as poll-driven as they say, he'll be doing his darndest to get rid of social housing ... DH has recently been exposed to a live specimen of the Resentful Classes, who has obviously majored in Political Economy at the University of Late Night Talkback. According to Ms Resentful's guru.  Emeritless Prof Jock Shocker, the housing shortage is caused by housos, and the people who are in public housing should be out, while those who are waiting should be in, until they are in, of course, in which case they should be out on their ears again.  All replete with the slogans dreamed up by the NSW Right, Tripodi, Burton, and Fancy Pants. "A hand-up, not a hand-out", "A privilege, not a right".

Wonder what slogans Arbibi will dream up for us?

Fred Nile, pull another!

Oh come on. It's the oldest story in the DMS-IV. Scratch any anti-sex crusader and you'll find a closet perv. It's called projection.. The beauty of being an anti-sex crusader is that you get to think about porn 24/7 while blissfully ignorant of your own lust. You're merely monitoring the evil "other".

OMIGOD, if this is true, given her close watch on Howard and his evil seed, DH may be a closet free-marketeering venture capitalist.  Or worse yet a budgie fetishist.

All the world loves a lover.. except Housing NSW

Caveat Houso! If you acquire a lover watch out! You could end up with all your possessions on the street, waiting for the removalist van to nowhere.

The first thing to note is that if someone sleeps over, don’t imagine that it’s OK as long as they are paying rent elsewhere.

Having recently joined RSVP, naturally DH’s first thought was to get HNSW’s approval for any romantic developments that might ensue.

DH rang the HNSW Tenants Hotline, and in the first instance was immensely relieved to hear that it would not be necessary to invite her CSO to chaperone the first date.


However, the call centre advised that should a guest stay for more than 3 weeks, the department must be notified. Further, to be "on the safe side" it is advisable to let the Dept know after two weeks.

Scratching around for a loophole DH then posed the following question, not mincing any words: “But, what if, say, you have a lover, and you send them home for just one night every 3 weeks for a shower and a shave?”.


Back came the answer to gladden the giddiest romantic's heart: “Legally, that is acceptable”.

But DH’s fantasy of languorous Chateau Houso days lengthening into weeks didn’t last long. And not only because she’s never had any luck whatsoever with RSVP (where desperate housos are not in great demand…)

For that's when the thought struck!

IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

Running this past a lawyerly acquaintance with some familiarity with the Housing Act, DH came down to earth with a walloping thud.


Yes, opined the lawyerly type, it may be legally true, but if you have a malicious neighbour say, and they dob you in, guess what? You will not be presumed innocent until proven guilty. No, you have to prove your innocence. In the case of the Family Kaphoops next door, it might be their word against yours.

Ah yes, you ask, but what about the Tribunal, the CTTT, surely they will declare on the side of love?

Well maybe.  But HNSW has ways of getting around those old softies.  HNSW will simply cancel your subsidy and demand the back rent. And if you can’t pay, you can be evicted on failing to pay arrears. 

The Stepford Prime Minister... or do the ends justify the means?

Um... DH feels bad about yesterday's comment. We gotta have hope that Julia Gillard's remote-controlled robotic performance is specifically designed to appeal to those resentful ignorami, the swinging voters, and she doesn't mean all the nasty bashing of unemployed people, or the sickening self-righteous palaver about hard-working Australian families.

Perhaps the ends do justify the means when it comes to keeping the awful Libs out.

Remember,, the Libs allowed the current housing crisis to develop. They had 10 years to do something about housing. Yet they did not provide for a single unit of social housing to be built to take the heat out of the housing market. Instead they put billions into private landlord's pockets via rent assistance... thus contributing to the inflation of rents.

Election comment

Gillard is a disgusting sell-out and repellent scab on the body politic. Who tf is she anyway?

Abbott and Hockey are clowns, and the smelly barrel-scrapings of the Liberal Party (which never had much in the barrel except pork for the fatso end of town)

Here in the Sydney electorate, Tanya Plibersek is smart, compassionate and hard-working, can't ask for a better politician. I wonder what she really thinks. I hope she's agonising over the moral dilemma of whether there's anything useful that can be done from within this bankrupt "Labor" party.

The local  Greens would rollover if confronted by 3 men and a dog wearing a Socialist Alliance T-shirt.

Gordon Weiss is quite a nice sensible man, but must be judged by the company he keeps.

Tanya is our only hope now in the Sydney electorate.

We've hit rock bottom folks. Happy voting on Saturday!

Lest we forget: Why we voted the Liberals out

OK, so this is a shameless referral to outdated content in the right sidebar, but DH has little heart for blogging, with Labor so craven, and the media preoccupied with gossip and drivel. It's disheartening to listen to smart women like Fran Kelly on Radio National carrying on like a bunch of hens at a pecking party. Who cares about Julia or Tony's clothes when, frinstance, grannies are sleeping rough. The best argument against voting liberal is to remember some of the awful things they did.

Not that Labor has reversed many of these policies. They're too busy still dancing to the tune of Howard's divisive, free market, racist, class warfare agenda. What a pity they were too gutless to chart a new course while they had the chance. Looks like they'll be turfed out anyway.

Darwinism masquerading as Christianity

• Jesus would turn in his grave to see how Howard and Co created a dog-eat-dog,
  survival of the fittest, the-strong-shall-inherit-the-lot Australia,
  all in His name, meanwhile ...
• Hypocrisy - Abbott's "Right to Life" for disabled people did not extend to the Right to a Good Life, which would have required a decent level of disability funding

Adhockery

• They never spend money on planning or research, the plan was to dream something up overnight when the polls dipped, then send in the army to back it up

The NT intervention

• 
  
  See above

Robbing the Poor to give to the Rich

• the transfer of $3 BILLION from public housing into the pockets of private
  landlords: result: inflation
• the "budget surplus" extracted from the nation's rotting teeth
• the transfer of funding from the poorest schools to the richest based on the sham of postcode

Pandering to religious extremists

• for blurring the hard won boundaries between church and state
• no worries about fundamentalist extremist lunatics if they're Exclusive Brethren adding to election coffers
• inviting Hillsong to rip off the welfare system

Pandering to racists

• thick as thieves with the loony anti-semites of the League of Rights
• Nazi Croat propagandist Lyenko Urbancic leading light of the Liberal party
• playing the Muslim card when it suits them

Robbing Women and Children

• gutting the childcare system set up by Labor. Remember how it came to fruition with the collapse of ABC childcare

Robbing workers of hard won rights

• Serfchoices
• Welfare to Workhouse
• fining individuals for striking
• using the services of a a repressive Muslim state to secretly train strike breakers
• the time-wasting conscription of disabled Australians into pointless low paid
  jobs

The Wedgie Portfolio

• taking every opportunity to “divide and rule” by appealing to resentment, fear, downward envy, xenophobia
• the harassment and villification of battlers via Centrelink while pretending to be on their side

Kafkalink

• the deliverance of the effective CES (Commonwealth Employment Service) into
  the hands of unscrupulous private operators
• Centrelink's punitive and humiliating regimes
• the gutting of Centrelink’s administrative infrastructure subjecting welfare
  recipients to bungle after bungle and desperation-inducing delays in
  payment
• miserable pensions that don’t keep up with the cost of living
• breaching the weakest

The big lie, spin, propaganda

• Is it $1 BILLION dollars of taxpayers money spent on Liberal Party
  advertising since they got in?
• non-core promises
• successfully slandering people with a social conscience as the “elites”, while the real
  elites have never been richer

Muzzling the press

• stacking the ABC board with Howard’s cronies
• Draconian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005
• prosecution of whistleblowers McManus, Harvey, Kelly, check out the details http://www.alliance.org.au/resources/reports_%26_submissions/

Shaming Australia

• Toadying to the imbecile Bush
• Children Overboard
• Christmas Island
• detention centres run like concentration camps
• incarcerating children in detention centres
• Siev-x
• the Tampa

Cricket

• It just wasn't...