Talking about talking about poverty

Last night’s workshop was intense, but thank you for the opportunity to have my say!

My brief for last night was “How people in poverty communicate online, to each other, our allies and our detractors”

Social media and other online communities are a literal lifeline to people on welfare – It’s a relatively cheap way to get social contact using tools we already have to have for all the external obligations. 

For me it’s been an escape from IRL pressures  but also finding community and people with the same experiences-  you can vent about something and others might not have a solution but they can sympathise and they do that thing where they rely their similar experience and you feel less alone. Sometimes we can work through things together and solve problems  – with government, finding out about a program that isn’t advertised, with sourcing money for things, but often it’s just learning that you’re not a complete outlier. 

Just by sharing your experience you can reveal things to the general public that they just don’t realise – from the fact that you have to pay at foodbanks to reality of upfront costs for medicare items being the barrier to going at all regardless of how much you get back, or how much or how little indexation on payments is by showing them the raw dollar figures. 

Controlling your narrative in some way is more and more important whether that be on your own blog, or even on social media sites owned by someone else (no matter how little you align with their politics), it’s your post, you own it in that it has your name on it it’s not a part of a report or selectively quoted in media. Please do lock your account when needed, turn off replies, mute and block people liberally. 

Detractors: I try not to focus on them at a personal level – I might use their negative statements about poverty or disability or welfare to have my own rant from my own point of view, and that’s for the benefit of people who see themselves as allies and might want to both sides things, bringing it back to a real person. My blog posts are about showing what my life is like – and in relation to whatever has prompted it – I will try to pull facts and examples into it but sometimes it just becomes a rant. And that’s okay because it’s my space to have that rant. I want to be able to write more considered posts that actually have research and drafts, but my favourite posts are all off the cuff and in response to something immediate. 

Allies: These are the ones I put time into trying to convince of things, that we deserve things to be good not just slightly better. Also other people on or have previously been on welfare are sometimes hard to convince they deserve/d better and that it’s actually really hard now. 

Community – I suppose a huge frustration I’m having at the moment is the mismatch between the messaging from Labor and what they’ve really delivered for welfare recipients and this being reflected in their media. In opposition people felt they were on the side of ppl on welfare – but the rhetoric has switched back to workers only. Deserving/undeserving poor. The housing and cost of living crisis is being felt by everyone, which is up and down for empathy – people are seeing that it can be difficult for anyone, but 

Welfare recipients -are sick of politicians’ shit and the media and peak groups using them but nothing coming of it. 

What to think about when having conversations in an election context:

Bringing it back to reality – mantras or the parties are only as good as what they actually vote for – whether that’s to do with rhetoric in opposition about welfare or climate change, Promises like cashless debit card – cemented it in for some.

Labor – I’m not here to attack Labor, I’ll criticise anyone, and try to point out how they act in practice, and how it’s worth preferencing other parties or candidates over them if they would push for XYZ that you support in the event of a hung parliament – eg dental for kids is topical because of Tanya saying how Greens should be taking credit even though Labor legislated it to get Greens guarantee of supply for Gillard. 

Like many of you know it just hurts people more when politicians pretend or insist they care about you but then fail to actually do anything concrete to support you. 

Fear based messaging – you’ll have it worse under LNP etc is doing my head in- well I need carrots not sticks – I want Labor to promise me a god time not threaten a bad time with someone else.

So I’m hitting publish on this, not because it’s finished or at all refined but because I have other things to focus on today – Heading to Canberra tomorrow for a press conference on Thursday morning to mark 5 years since the covid supplement changed people’s lives for the better.

If you wanna catch up, come along for brekkie/coffee at Parliament House beforehand – RSVP here.