In
fact there’s only one thing worse than being a welfare recipient and that’s
being a disabled
welfare recipient. But whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger like my job
capacity assessment. Hey guys, don’t diss my disability. You know being on
welfare makes us aspirational voters – we take an aspro every time we get called into Centrelink. Gees it's been at least 2 weeks since the last
compulsory client review – must be time we checked up on them again! At this
rate we’ll have one half of Australia being paid to watch the other half – ASIO
eat your heart out. And deciding which major party to give our preferences to
is a real pain. Do we vote for the one that’s anti-welfare or the one that’s uber
anti-welfare? Next
election I’m telling them: “not tonite dear I’ve got a headache”.
Speaking of being screwed. Have you ever noticed how efficient banks are since they sacked most of the staff? Now banks like Westpac make $5.9 billion a year and their CEO, Gail Kelly, got $9.5 million. You’ve gotta admire the symmetry its almost like 69 no wonder they’re fucking us over! But seriously you need real money to get the best qualified executives like Gail. She’s a Latin teacher from Seth Efrika and with daddy’s “encouragement” lands a job in a bank gets fast-tracked and the rest is history. Or was it herstory...
Speaking of being screwed. Have you ever noticed how efficient banks are since they sacked most of the staff? Now banks like Westpac make $5.9 billion a year and their CEO, Gail Kelly, got $9.5 million. You’ve gotta admire the symmetry its almost like 69 no wonder they’re fucking us over! But seriously you need real money to get the best qualified executives like Gail. She’s a Latin teacher from Seth Efrika and with daddy’s “encouragement” lands a job in a bank gets fast-tracked and the rest is history. Or was it herstory...
The Greens have got the right idea – just recycle everything. Ya recycle holy water by boiling the hell out of it and reuse toilet paper by beating the crap out of it. So why not losers too? Yeah f*ck all those broke useless cripples and redundant workers. All they need is tough love to cure their character flaws. Then when they get depressed and suicidal and can’t afford to eat we’ll ask for more psychiatrists. So why not get welfare recipients to line up and jump off a big, tall tower? We’ll have the shrinks standing by telling them it’s all mind over matter – Australia doesn’t mind and you don’t matter. But that could be messy, maybe we need a ‘Pacific solution’ – it works so well for refugees why not jobseekers? So next time some retrenched worker turns up at Centrelink we’ll stick a sign on the door saying: “Piss off, we’re full” and send them to Christmas Island for processing. If they get shipwrecked and tossed into the sea, we’ll throw them a Hillsong Church sermon: “A hand up not a handout! Jesus loves a billionaire, greediness is next to godliness”.
Guess
I’m an expert now cos I received help from the government’s welfare-to-work
reforms. I phoned their help line to tell them their ‘help’ wasn’t very helpful
and a voice on the other end says: “ We’ll decide what’s good for you not
you!”. After that kind of help I get a nervous breakdown and referred to the
Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service. They send me a glossy brochure with all
these smiling faces saying how much they’re gonna ‘help’ me. So I turn up at this CRS panel with a dozen people sitting around a table the size of a
football field.
“Look”
I say “I’ve got depression, a dodgy back and wrist and I’m looking after a kid
and a mother with dementia.” I ask for physiotherapy – but they’ve got no money
for that.
“What
about helping me contact employers and typing job applications?” Not bloody
likely.
“So
what can you do for
me?”
“We
will supervise your
efforts to find employment.”
Well
at least its keeping them off the streets – the CRS I mean, because I’d hate to
meet them in a dark alley. They mugged me from behind an office desk – imagine
what they could do in a balaclava!
Who
needs the CRS anyway when we’ve got the Starvation Army’s Employment Pus just back from their Manus Island Tour of Duty. Now instead of overseeing refugees, they're breaching jobseekers for being just five
minutes late to their lousy seminars on how to write a letter to an employer. Never
mind the futility of learning to beg for jobs that don’t exist. Or that we've done the same job training ten times over. NO EXCUSES. “Your bus was
running late? That’ll be 6 months of bread and water for you!” Thank god for
the Salvos? How about some truth in advertising like:
“Help
us to help Australia beat up the unemployed” or
“This
winter, give generously to authority, make charity history.”
Street
beggar signs should say: “Forget spare change, we need real change!”
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* http://www.busnews.com.au/news/industry/1107/restrict-sydneys-concession-users-says-academic
* http://www.busnews.com.au/news/industry/1107/restrict-sydneys-concession-users-says-academic
