Category: cost of living

What’s simply “convenient” for you may be an essential disability accommodation for others

Every week there’s discussion on Twitter about convenience and disability accommodations. You’ve probably put your two cents in without even knowing it on a post ruing how you can buy pre-cut fruit at the supermarket, or on a post about the labor conditions of DoorDash workers. You probably weren’t deliberately ableist, you just come at it from your point of view – home delivered groceries from the majors is a convenience for you, a time saver in this busy world, while for others it’s the only way they can do a grocery shop for whatever reason. That reason isn’t really any of your business, but it could be physical ability to carry groceries, energy sapping disabilities that really can’t prioritise browsing the aisles, sensory difficulties that mean supermarkets are hell on earth, and many more. These are some of the people who can’t just shop at Aldi, no matter any price savings that may come from it.

Other people may DoorDash a meal on a day when they don’t have the energy for cooking, after prioritising other mentally or physically taxing tasks in their spoon allocation. They’re likely well away that the delivery driver isn’t receiving minimum wage, and feel guilty. That driver is possibly also disabled or another minority, eeking out a living in this discriminatory world, taking what work comes their way.

A Twitter contact was denied pre-prepared meals in the NDIS plan. These services tend to be only part-funded even if you do get them, but can mean the difference between subsisting off two minute noodles or having to rely on a $60 an hour NDIS funded support worker to cook for you. This particular person loves to cook and can’t do it any more due to their  disability, but instead of accepting this, the OT recommended they get more supports around learning to cook in order to become independent in their cooking. Again, she really wishes she could get back to making meals for herself and even for others but that’s not what life is presenting her, and having to fight the NDIS to acknowledge this and BELIEVE her is also energy-sapping and disheartening.

I was present for my sister’s first NDIS planning meeting this week, and she, like many late-diagnosed AuDHD peeps out there, has a collection of strategies that she uses to get by in this world, that are “ok” but not brilliant and we’re hoping these new supports can help her organise her life into something she thrives in.

Meanwhile, I’m watching and seeing how it goes for her, seeing if medications and therapeutic and other supports actually helps her out before I even consider going down that route for myself. In the meantime I have my own little things in life that people may consider convenience tools but I use to make my life more satisfying and manageable.

One is the meal box delivery services I use, a mainstream tool as an executive functioning aid. I still have to / get to cook meals every night, but I don’t need to get into the planning out of the meals, what and how much of it I need, ensuring what I want makes it home in my shopping, and not having to face the dilemma of what to do if something isn’t available (common for us Aldi shoppers) because I’m there at the wrong time of day. It also makes my actual in-person shops smaller – I mostly buy dairy and eggs or little treats, with extra fruit and veg coming from my foodbank foraging through the week. This means I’m in the store less, get less overwhelmed, and don’t really have to think too much on the spot, I just do the shopping and get out.

The ingredients that came in one everyplate box

I don’t want to just talk about food, but that’s my thing isn’t it? Ever the food blogger, even now. But again what you might see as a treat – seeing a sex worker, having a trip away from your family (or respite stays when you’re caring 24/7 for someone), having a bar fridge next to your workstation – enable you to function and thrive and live your best (disabled) life. If the NDIS doesn’t fund these things, many disabled people (or their carers) won’t have access to them, they will never be a little luxury for them, and they certainly cannot afford to fund many of these things themselves.

So, when you worry about whether something a disabled person is doing or using is necessary, it probably is for them. Unfortunately we’re not at the stage of most disabled people getting to move beyond that, so please watch how you challenge their everyday needs.

 

Happy EOFYS! (Don’t let the tax cuts overwhelm you on the way out)

You can’t have missed it. EVERY AUSTRALIAN TAXPAYER IS GETTING A TAX CUT. Well, anyone earning above the tax free threshold is. Anyone paying GST or excise other other taxes that disproportionally impact the poorer peeps only isn’t.

Apparently, recipients of the age pension, a disability support pension and carer payments will be able to earn more before their payments are reduced. Singles can now earn $212 a fortnight (previously $204) and couples can earn $372 (previously $360). Let’s ignore the face that those people are currently on sub-poverty level payments because they’re supposed to be caring for themselves or others full time and really shouldn’t have to go out to work for that elusive block of cheese. Aspirational cheese.

I’m still slightly bitter that the energy rebate is less, even though it was just stupid to begin with. Also jelly of those states going to elections getting extra from their state labor where GST splits have allowed it. My bill is only going up, and here I am hoping my stepson’s JobSeeker application gets approved before the next bill so we can use his backpay to pay that. Waiting time for Jobseeker is still about 12 weeks I hear, so it lines up.

I’ll be relieved when tomorrow comes and the mailing lists I’m signed up for for various organisations with charitable status will stop asking for end-of financial year contributions. Though I have shared this one for Southlakes, the local community support organisaion near me that’s run on the smell of an oily rag, feeding families each week after Centrelink refers them their way rather then government deigning it time to Raise the Rate above the poverty line.

$12 bag of expired food items from a foodbank

I’ve starting attending rental inspections for the step-kid and bub to mover back to Newcastle, there’s so little out there and so many families at each inspection. At least we all have housing, it’s not ideal but it’s shelter.

There is no “right way” to protest or otherwise advocate for change

Be polite they say, don’t graffiti they say, don’t smash a window to break un unjust law. Don’t block the road, don’t camp there. Fill out this complaint form, submit to this enquiry, accept the status quo.

I’ve always been a “good girl”, not rocking the boat, trying to make peace in a house, in a group. Trying to keep things calm at the expense of what I believed was just. So I’m new to all this. New to rocking the boat. Hell  I’ve not yet don’t a port blockade because my father works the tugs and my mother doesn’t approve. But I’m learning what boundaries I’m happy to push, while maintaining the fluffy pink outer shell and making others comfortable.

The federal Health Minister has visited the Hunter, announcing a new urgent care clinic for either Newcastle, or Lake Macquarie.While it’s good news for patients, some say more needs to be done to improve access to bulk-billing.
Recently on the local news, complaining that no-one bulk bills anymore – video is here

Protest can’t be effective if it doesn’t inconvenience SOMEONE. I find extreme weather cause by climate change pretty inconvenient, the people being killed by it the ecosystems being destroyed, so I don’t see it as an overreaction to block a coal train to disrupt supply or shut down peak hour traffic to bring attention to the cause. You’ll never make everyone happy.

This week was winter solstice, and Vinnies’ biggest fundraising gig of the year – the CEO sleepout. This is where bosses and other bigwigs pretend to be homeless for a night by sleeping in brand new Kathmandu sleeping bags with Visy branded cardboard to protect them from any elements that may appear in the football field or parliament underground carpark that night. They get to network and go to sleep with a full belly, able to sleep through the night undisturbed by the weather, nightmares from trauma, police moving them on, critters at their toes or dickheads walking home from the pub trying to provoke them

How lovely and clean is the parliament house underground carpark? There’s toilet onsite, and guards to keep away those pesky actual homeless people who might see it as better than sleeping under the Lake Burley Griffin bridges. People have been pointing out the flaws in the event for years.

Mel aka Artist Affame is a good friend and recently too on the convener role at the Antipoverty Centre. She uses her wealth of “lived experience” to advocate for change, using her art to bring more eyes in, and has learned amazingly well how to express herself through her art and writing, and through the “proper channels” of meeting with politicians and attending consultation events and being generally awesome.

That didn’t stop her state’s premier’s media teams from blocking her on Twitter this week for questioning why he’d do the CEO sleepout when he has the power to actually change things for poor and homeless people in South Australia. or Vinnies themselves from also blocking her this week (they’ve previously blocked other antipoverty activists) after questioning the efficacy of the sleepout, and why they’d be doing that while still exploiting people through work for the dole. But I don’t think we have laws here where you can’t block your constituents for asking questions of you.

So, we’ll keep taking you petitions to ignore, making submission you’ll ignore and going through peer led advocacy which you’ll ignore, while you have lunch with ACOSS and still ignore their recommendations to stop keeping people poor. We held out hope that the Robodebt’s revealed horrors would be dealt with by the corruption commission, but no, people just got to remain nameless and move on. So, at some stage people are going to get more than a little frustrated that going through the right channels, being polite, being calm, that they’re not getting them anywhere.

And then we’ll see things burn.

drawing of a frog with a molitov cocktail with text be the light you want to see in the world

I’m tired, sore and disappointed. Happy Budget Hangover day

This but it’s May 2024:

A couple of days ago we heard that there was gonna be some sort of increase to the useless rent assistance payment in this budget. That turned out to be 10% from September 20’s next indexation, up to $9/week depending on how much you already get, if you’re one of people who can actually access it. If my rent goes up less than $10/week at the end of the year (if I’m lucky enough to get a renewed lease hey) I’ll be shocked. Shocked.

Image

5000 people on JobSeeker who have assessed work capacity of <15 hours (and by all rights should be on DSP if the rules for that weren’t so restrictive) will get a slightly higher rate of Jobseeker, like the over 55s who have been on Jobseeker for 9 months or more. I guess it’s their substitute for not having a sickness benefit – so Cancer patients can afford to pay for parking at the hospital for treatment or something.

Image

No actual JobSeeker or other welfare increases, despite the hopes and prayers of the community sector and the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. Thoughts and prayers that I beg them to at least persist with for the next 12 months, because Labor can’t be re-electable without a plan to bring welfare payments to the poverty line in their 2025 election promises.

The $300 energy bill subsidy for all is less than pensioners and families got this financial year (you might be getting some extra in Qld or WA from their state labor governments going to elections this year), and won’t be felt by those who don’t need it and $50 less subsidy a quarter WILL be felt by me. So Yeah. Not impressed. Also, straight to the billing company, quarter by quarter no chance of using it in one hit to catch up or to use for something else. (or someone else if you want to spend your subsidies and tax cuts on Andrew Leigh’s dream of a doubled charity sector by 2030).

Medicines are being capped at their current top rates ($7.70 for pensioners, $31.60 for everyone else) for a few years. So that’ll mean getting less behind, something I yelled about them doing sooner, and yay they’ve done it. Which is great, cos I’ve been having health concerns, and having to pay upfront for the GP isn’t going anywhere for most of us as most GPs haven’t returned to bulk billing, and the average gap in $44 a session now. My scans and blood tests were bulk billed last week, but still need $76 upfront for an appointment for follow-up  so I’m going on Friday, pension day!

I’ll leave you with the darling Catherine Caine, brains behind Nobody Deserves Poverty, and her budget reaction from last night.

Love yas. xo

Defining the “Essentials” of Living

Week two of the Poverty course, and the pre-lecture discussion this week is about what things we would consider to be everyday essentials for everyone. We’ve gone through some items from the Australian Living Standards Survey (ALSS), 2017, Poverty and Exclusion in Modern Australia (PEMA) Survey, 2010 and as a comparison the Hong Kong Measuring Poverty and Social Exclusion Questionnaire, 2011 and chosen whether they’re essential for everyone, whether we have them and if we don’t is it because we chose not to have them or can’t afford them.

Some items, like clothes dryers and dishwashers are generally seen as non-essential. However with the two weeks of rain we’ve had here on the east coast I could go a drier right now, and the dishwasher we somehow have in this rental cuts my dishwashing time so much, time and spoons I can allocate elsewhere. Not a luxury, not and essential for me, but nice to have.

Others have discussed whether home internet is essential, and I would argue it is for nearly everyone these days, how else would any of us be able to do an inline course after dark without it? But then, doing a course such as this one is a little luxury in itself. Being able to extend knowledge in a field you work in every day, to gain more insight, more theoretical and practical understanding of what you’re actually dealing with. I’ve many friends and comrades in the antipoverty movement who rely on their home or mobile internet to connect, to lobby, to seek help, to learn and further themselves and their causes. They may be able to make do with a phone only – I can’t just do phone if I want to read anything longer than a tweet, but to say that essential internet stuff can be dealt with on an hour booked time on a local library PC is really restrictive and doesn’t take into account what people need to do online to live these days.

Dental care is essential, but not available to many. Same with health care – the Hong Kong survey asked if being able to take a taxi to and from hospital was essential – here we would most likely have a friend or family member with a car to take us home, even if we were able to have an ambulance ride in – but whether that’s even an option varies by state, concessions and insurances.

Speaking of insurance – home contents and comprehensive car insurance were on the questionnaire for Australia. I personally don’t have either, I flinched hard enough at the quote for greenslips to simply re-register my car. But are they essential? I’m sure other drivers would like to know the others on the road were insured. And if we lost our home to a fire we’d be starting from scratch. But to insure our wombled household goods? So hard to justify.

Other items and conditions, such as a house without mold, adequate heating or cooling, the means to afford those power bills, are all everyday discussion in my threads. All to be treasured when you have them and to push for others to have too. How could you argue they’re not essential but those in power still hesitate to mandate them.

I’ve had a busy morning, taking a  months recycling out to the point, starting some of my Antipoverty Centre duties and trying to finish these readings. The 6-8pm timeframe of lectures is rough, but I can make it through that. I’m a bit tired, the cool weather just makes me want to sleep more too. The rain makes juggling the dog’s begging to go out and the washing backing up hard. At least Maxi’s skin irritations have settled.