#ilona makes a big rant/story/diatribe on a big post

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

on top of this, if you are on welfare, most specifically the job seeking payment (job seeker- ie what i’m on) and also some forms of youth allowance, they’re forcing you to go into mandatory job provider “mutual obligations” appointments N PERSON- when god knows who the fuck is infected with omicron or whatever other fucking variant of covid.

when 4 years ago in 2018 (before the pandemic), when i was on the same payment my literal 5 minute (although scheduled to be 15 minutes) appointments that were literally like “are you meeting your requirements?” “yes!” “are you applying for 20 jobs a month as part of your job plan? yes.” “thanks we’ll call next month to ask the same thing!” were eventually ALL done on the phone with the exact example convo i just made up there. all because my job provider people KNEW that i had the resources at home, so why on earth was i wasting my goddamned time and money travelling to the office to get hounded by them and to use their computers??? back then they KNEW how useless and pointless me attending these meetings was. but oh no! says the government. it’s not pointless and useless not during a pandemic!! GO into the office and possibly get sick instead! because you jobless heathens, you MUST be punished for struggling to get hired or not being able to work at all (if immunocompromised or injured etc).

for example, last year there was a story of a former pilot with brain cancer (although the article is more about him being denied the disability support pension when he very obviously should be on it) being forced apply for jobs and being forced onto the job seeking payment that requires these bullshit meetings- when it went against every one of his various doctors requests for him to be off of work for 6 months or more. this is also why i didn’t apply for the job seeker payment until literally november last year. i had no fucking mental space after my stomach tumour removal surgery and me healing from it- to deal with the bullshit that the government and centrelink (social services) push onto the unemployed and sick people. obvs i’m luckier thanks the guy in the article, but you get my point.

however, now in the middle of a fucking pandemic, scumo and his liberal (right wing) mates are punishing low income/unemployed/under-employed people (let alone people who may be immunocompromised or suffering from other health conditions) by forcing them to attend fucking worthless job provider meetings physically all so they can say “oh yeah i’m applying for 20 jobs a month” or get their payments cut…. but just in person instead of over the phone- ie the safer option.

don’t get me wrong, they did stop these bullshit physical meetings in 2020; but they eventually brought them back and probably won’t get rid of them again…. when literally all of mine should be done over the goddamned phone like they were in 2018. for example: the week before last (because you have to go every fortnight now instead of once a month… or maybe it was twice a month in 2018 but i can’t remember now) all i fucking did was fill out a PHYSICAL job application form for a call centre that i had already applied for myself for my said 20 jobs a month for my payments in december…. and that was only bc the manager of my job provider is friends with the manager for the call centre that i’d applied for myself. so my point still stands: what the fuck was the point of me even attending this bs meeting when all my job placement guy did was re-write my resume in front of me (for me- since it was an example resume for another position that i ACTUALLY wanted but didn’t get bc of not having my own car) to send it off AGAIN??? and for me to fill out the physical form again. remind me why the fuck this would be better done over the phone or not done at all???? i’ll wait. tell me how the fuck this wasn’t meant to make me feel like it’s all pointless and stupid and time-wasting pencil pushing??? i’ll wait.

but anyway. the whole point is that the government is purposely putting low-income jobseekers/the unemployed/underemployed etc etc into a dangerous position all bc “WE NEED GOOD JOB NUMBERS! DO YOUR PART!” by forcing even immunocompromised and other sick people (and also the general above people) into physical job provider appointments- all under the guise (probs) that these people are less likely to lie about their job applying in person than they are over the phone….. and in doing so, are wasting literally EVERYONE’S fucking time, money, sanity and safety for in person appointments. just give people a fucking UBI and be fucking done with it and also cut the stringent requirements of in person meetings in a fucking major pandemic outbreak.

yep, "children driving forklifts" is definitely the radical, forward thinking kind of action that might just turn this whole thing around!

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

it’s the same thing with australia too.... especially since the government has now introduced a new international visa policy that requires a persons foreign partner “to take 500 hours of english lessons so they can use english at a “functional level”” (if they’re from a non native english speaking country) before they move here..... and it’s been dubbed “white australia policy 2.0” by some political commentators and also by anyone that has an actual functioning brain..... unlike our current shitty liberal (right wing) prime minister and his equally shitty cabinent.

moreover, that’s not even counting all the other shit we have going on either like deaths in custody.... or the cuts to jobseeker and job keeper social security payments (both of which cut off in december- except for victoria who gets their payments cut off in march next year... and the government was actually forced to give victorians “pandemic leave” payments which they’ll run until next year as well). so with the rest of the country having their social security cut by $250 this month (my payment literally goes down the day after my fucking birthday to $629 down from $929) which then gets cut back down to my normal $393 by the end of the year; we’re plunging into a horrible recession. and it’s just when the job market has an extra 106 people per an application, making it literally impossible for anyone to get a fucking job.

then people are like “just uproot your life completely to move out to the farms which are literally 8-10hours away from the cities where the majority of working people are living..... for 3-6 weeks to pick fruit..... and that’s just to be exploited with shit wages just like the migrant workers that used to do it” and that actually includes the government saying that very same thing as well. on the topic of the job keeper/job seeker payments, not a cent of them went to migrant workers or international students etc so apparently they were just meant to “go back” to their home country or whatever even though flights are grounded world over; to the point where alone airlines are shutting down permanently. the same goes for aussie tourists which went overseas before the pandemic hit worldwide; because the government has stopped trying to help them too.

back to the topic of farm work: theyre even offering uni students hecs debts reductions if they relocate to a farm to work for a while.... and that’s just when the fucked up parliament passed the higher education reform that makes particular courses in the arts, social sciences, law and business fucking SKYROCKET to $42,200.... while most other fields like teaching, science/tech/engineering (oh and english) and maths get heavily reduced solely bc they’re in “higher demand for a job ready economy”. or whatever bullshit they’ve said to cover their asses with their FREE arts/law/social science degrees.... while they’re further plunging young prospective uni students into high study debts or forcing many students to not even attend uni; especially if they’re likely to fail some subjects in their first year bc they want to remove hecs and force people to pay upfront if they fail more than 3 subjects. oh the bitter, bitter fucking irony.

then obviously there’s the “gas led recovery” that scommo/scummo wants to lead here for the next few years at least (until we hopefully vote out the libs in the next election) because scummo and his mates just want to keep funding fossil fuels til the end of time, which is obviously nigh under this policy..... instead of just leaning into renewables, which most of the country are literally BEGGING our politicians to do. because these fuckers, just like trump in the US, love avoiding science by taking lumps of coal to a parliament sitting (remember that, australia?).

to sum up, australia isn’t some type of great, amazing socialist/egalitarian fairness haven bc of our socialised medicare system (which again the liberals/aussie republicans/aussie torys would like to remove and hand it all over to the private insurance companies instead; so then we’d be just like the US).... we have our utterly unfair bullshit system as well y’all.

”just move to Canada!” the Canadians say when people they like bitch about life in America, not realizing that Canada wouldn't let my disabled, chronically ill ass in because Canadian immigration would deem me a drain on society 😬

Like y’all, please I know you mean well, but I’m going to have to ask you to look within and rectify your own systemic problems before you tell people to come on over like you’re offering pristine salvation. Just because you're not America doesn't absolve you of your inequalities, your ableism or your history of past and present racism. It's not enough to just be better than America, because right now that bar is so low it's surrounded by magma, and I’m not unconvinced a day trip to Hell itself wouldn’t feel like a vacation.

Shits straight up on fire here, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to keep an eye on your own smoke.