I started a new Sims save today – after reinstalling windows last month I needed to get all the updates and update OBS and all the other things to make streaming possible again. And I got there. It’s cleaner because so much got purged, I’m sure I’ll add to the clutter on the screen, in my life – both Sims and IRL.
I first got online in 2000, aged 17/18. So an older teen, but still a teen. I got onto playing Neopets, chatting through ICQ and Yahoo Groups, and we started online journals and blogging. I made friends around the world. I don’t see banning teens and tweens even from social media as viable, let alone a good thing. Kids already just get their parents and older siblings to make accounts for them or watch hours of appropriate and less-appropriate content. A ban would see kids less able to speak up when things are a bit shady online, less able to know who to turn to if there’s a problem if they’re having to hide that part of their lives and learning to navigate it with less guidance than how many are now – locked down Instagram accounts with a select audience, Minecraft servers with strangers and friends, Youtube channels and Twitter bringing us the headlines more reliably than the national broadcaster.
The country doesn’t know when to actually let kids be kids, and when to criminalise them to to imposed outdated views on what kids should be doing. Access to information when growing up is important, and these days that information and social experimentation happens a lot online. People are worried that kids are being sexualised too young if they’re learning about queerness when really they’re just learning the terminology for what they’re feeling inside themselves that kids in the 90s and earlier couldn’t find out unless they were avid readers borrowing every book in the local library, or were in a very progressive pocket of town. Kids know they’re “not straight” but doesn’t have the words for it, just as trans kids exist and need families who just let them explore themselves – through playing with gender roles, names, types of clothing and more. Kids get to see that Straight, Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual and other categories of people are able to grow up into happy and healthy adults and can see that positive possibility for themselves.
I’m loving that future for the kids. Let’s not take it from them.
So Bill thinks we’re all getting a little hysterical when we say that people will die because of the NDIS legislation they’ve pushed through with Pauline’s help. He tells us not to be anxious and that the sun’ll come out tomorrow. I know it will Bill, it’ll be above average temperatures all week on the East Coast and all. But people will be worse off, and have their care needs neglected because of your legislation. They will also be more vulnerable to taking their own lives because of losing supports that keep them safe and healthy, and because of punitive Robo whatever actions you’re overseeing with the lovely staff leftover from Robodebt that have found new lives in the NDIA compliance teams.
fuck you not for everyone “To those who are feeling anxious, I respect that. I just want to say to the sun will come up tomorrow.”
Labor accused of ‘ripping the heart’ out of NDIS as funding changes come into lawhttps://t.co/V7aNLZztEK
I’m not going to put in links to reference this post, I’m sick, and have a GP appointment at 12.15. One that I get to pay $80 upfront for because your government has not helped Medicare bulk billing, and nowhere around here routinely bulk bills concession card holders anymore.
Jimmy’s also promised that he won’t do anything on the welfare end either in the lead up to the election. So, we don’t have to worry about being hopeful or disappointed and we can move straight into getting the Greens and Independents to promise real action on welfare. We have all the evidence that lifting welfare to the poverty line won’t affect Jim’s Inflation, but Labor won’t help us, so it’s time to go around them. Jimmy said this morning there’ll be a March budget ahead of the May election. So that’s his last chance to disappoint us and tell us he thinks we deserve poverty to make his bottom line look nicer.
Are you a unionist? How are you feeling about the Labor- Union relationship with the CFMEU? You don’t have to think that the CFMEU are good or bad to agree that it seems a bit of overreach and a real threat to the union movement to have worked with the LNP to impose 3 years administration….
So, I want a magic answer from the GP, I need to this cough gone. It’s getting in the way of me actually getting out and doing the things I’m otherwise ready to do mentally. I need to be able to talk. And yell. And scream. And rage against this fucking machine.
After the disheartening response to the Disability Royal Commission finally came out last month, advocates and many others were left in literal tears, wondering what the point of a 4 -year commission that heard the many stories of violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect of disabled Australians was. Again this week, those who gave evidence to the gambling harms enquiry are wondering the same. Why should vulnerable people who have already suffered subject themselves to rehashing their stories for the amusement of government panels who have already seemed to have decided what actions they’ll take no matter how harrowing it gets?
After three more deaths in custody in a week, and recent figures showing incarceration rates getting worse, it's time for real national action. pic.twitter.com/q4x5AXx93l
Of course, it’s just everyone else’s turn to learn this after the continued deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, seemingly not even slowing since the 1987 Royal Commission. The Closing the Gap figures last week were going backwards in essential areas, with the stirred up racism and disappointment of “The Voice” brushed aside by our dear leader, who can’t commit to Makarrata, to Treaty, or even to Truth Telling, which is sorely needed. We need to face the fact that we’re continuing the horrors of the Stolen Generations with child protection policies and locking up Blak kids and that more of the same isn’t getting us anywhere.
And our Governments support for Genocidal Israel is not instilling confidence in their willingness to not continue the Genocide here.
Hi Stacy and @ACOSS, sharing our stories again and again doesn't seem to be helping convince politicians that no-one deserves to be living in poverty?
Each day I get emailed surveys to do, to share my story with another Not For Profit, or the Greens (who I’m still deciding whether I’ll renew my membership of, got another reminder text today) or news of another Senate inquiry. I don’t know what to do with these. I fill some responses out myself, when I have the spoons, but I’m reluctant to pass them on anymore. Reluctant to ask that emotional labor of people who are already battling to get through their day-to-day life when I can’t seem to offer them examples of how it will change things for them or the people they care about.
A lot of my people are burning out at the moment, running themselves thin, with family deaths and health issues themselves, wanting to ramp up to see if we can force Labor’s hand ahead of the upcoming election, but also needing to focus on self-care, on mutual aid, on trying to do some positive things too to brighten their lives in the immediate sense.
I’m down a car this week, so out of routine. Bruce’ll fix in on the weekend. But I went across the road for some sun with the dog just now and that was nice, gave me some healing warmth. I’ll catch the train into town tomorrow for group and might make some time to wander along the streets and browse the shops. There’s a few op-shops there I haven’t been to in ages I might pick up something from.
Hey if it’s good enough to acknowledge that Defense and the Industries that make the money off it need two portfolios, why not come out and admit that’s what you and the minister for Charities are really about, with his stated aims to double donations to charities by 2030, ensuring that government has less to do with supporting people than supporting the well-meaning white women that do.
Meanwhile, Tony Burke has given up on ignoring Workforce Australia and is reminiscing about the glory days of introducing the policy that ensure refugees that arrived by boat wouldn’t settle in this country, leading the many years of deaths and torture on nearby dentition islands. Murray Watt has picked up Employment, and is soon to learn that it’s like herding cats rather than sheep and you should just give in to the evidence based demands of livable welfare payments and scrap punitive policies like Work for the Dole and the Cashless Welfare cards in all their forms.
Shorten has reinforced his true white-supremacist/Eugenicist leaning by becoming a founding member of Labor Friends of Israel, whatever the fuck that is, and Peter Kahill wants to maintain social cohesion and the veneer of niceness with the special envoy role while no-one wants to touch the Islamophobia special envoy and Albo’s hoping that, like the prospect of a Republic will be quickly forgotten.
It’s the run-up to the election for sure, whether they call it early or we get to hold out til May, but it’s where we’re at.
Did you miss me while I was Twitter banned? I’m back baby!
Mother knows best, they say. But sometimes mother takes too much time considering Father’s feelings and need for things to remain the same forever and bites her tongue at the key moment to keep the peace, and nothing changes, or, it gets worse.
Why yes, I am a well-meaning white woman. And *gasp* I used to be a lady who lunched, flying to different capital cities, but mostly Melbourne, to discuss the future of that well know white woman profession, Speech Pathology. (I was ACT Branch president of Speech Pathology Australia for 4 years, and there were many white woman lunches). I’m white, university educated and if I didn’t have all this anxiety I’d probably exude a little more authority on topics I may speak on, even if I speak over someone with better ideas and more experience. But does this actually help the situation? Do we achieve the incremental change that was probably coming anyway, thank the bread givers for the crumbs and wait for the next convenient time to ask for a little more? Or do we push harder, and make people uncomfortable, and make them question their priorities. Is my priority the seat at the table or making sure there’s more diversity at the table, or is it flipping the kitchen table and finding a new way to have this conversation?
Well meaning student speech pathologists
Well-meaning white women are well skilled in trying to achieve what is important FOR the people they advocate for. I’ll go back to speech pathology because it’s where I’ve been for an example. It’s important that Grandad doesn’t aspirate on liquids after his stroke right, because this might lead to a chest infection and aspiration pneumonia can lead to death. So it’s important FOR Grandpa that, since there’s evidence he aspirates on his beer with his mates (some goes into his lungs rather than being swallowed cleanly), he is advised that he mustn’t drink beer any more, or perhaps have it thickened to a safer consistency. Grandpa smiles and nods at the young lady offering this advice and thickener samples, but then has a beer anyway, dealing with the coughing and the risk this yeasty treat might cause him.
But what’s important TO Grandpa here is the ritual of having his beer. It’s being able to have that normality after other aspects of his life have been taken away from him after the stroke. He may not have his license any more so has lost that independence, or he takes his other beverages thickened when at home – his wife thickens his tea and he reluctantly sips from a thickened bottle of cordial to stay hydrated in summer. But he knows the risks he takes, he’s read the brochures from the health service, he’s discussed it with his wife. So there’s duty of care and dignity of risk.
Another classic well meaning white woman is the child protection worker, who of course has a myriad of factors to take into account for a child’s safety, but may not consider that cultural safety is just as important as not being exposed to certain dangers. It’s a fine line that the well-meaning white woman walks, with policies and procedures, her own experiences and ideas of what’s right, and the threats to the status quo of trying things a different way. I don’t envy those roles, I probably could work in them and then find myself burnt out so fast from trying to just get it right.
But it’s when there’s not an imminent danger when the well-meaning white woman’s reluctance to ask for, or to DEMAND more, from those running the show or holding the purse strings needs to be examined, picked apart and thrown out. She needs to be willing to stop playing nice, stop upholding her place at the table, stop being so deferent and polite about it all. You need to start pulling your support when they just keep pretending to listen to you but then give nothing.
Lidia Thorpe at the Midwinter Ball
I’m referring here to all the committees and consultations that have come and gone over the first two years of Labor in the disability and welfare spheres. The Voice referendum and how quickly nothing came of that once the no vote was clear. How Lidia Thorpe and other Blak women who pointed out the obvious flaws of the Voice as it stood were thrown under the bus to keep things nice within their parties and organisations. How the Economic Inclusion Committee, run by well meaning white woman Jenny Macklin, put their evidence based arguments for significant increases to welfare to the Labor party that neat two weeks before budgets TWICE, in order to there be nothing done, and for ACOSS and other saying Thank you for $20 here and there, and more money for Commonwealth Rent Assistance that just pushes rents along their merry way and doesn’t achieve change in the lives of people who don’t have a roof over their head or if they do can’t afford the other necessities in life.
How you can have another post-budget lunch with the treasurer and listen to his spiel on “responsible” measures that don’t impact inflation, but don’t impact anything else really. Jim Chalmers refers to the conversations Australian families are having around their kitchen tables, about what he thinks they are talking about anyway. If you have a kitchen table, what are your conversations about? The people who are left behind are still left behind, and fall even further behind if you don’t even let them catch up.
Julian Hill was in my dreams last night, I was remembering before the start of the most recent Workforce Australia enquiry he had a video call with some of use from AUWU and the Antipoverty Centre, telling us how much he looked forward to our input and how much he valued our lived experience. And then he proceeded to reaffirm the myth of the dole bludger and the value of work for the dole at any chance he got. And what did we get from that? More reassurance that better things aren’t possible and that the status quo must be maintained. And there’s still silence on what the government will do about the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People With Disability. So we see more puff pieces about scented candles being made for sub-minimum wage while their employers make money off their labour and have expenses covered by the NDIS but crickets on raising the wages of disabled people to the same level as everyone else. They’re supposed to go to half the minimum wage this year and to minimum wage by 2034, in case you were wondering what was recommended.
Julian Hill is asked why Labor outsources employment services & isn't rebuilding a public service
"You couldn't do it" because "all of the service provision is sitting outside in privates & not for profits"
So, while these little committees and organisations may look nice, if you’re not working to include the voices of “others” – those actually affected by the policies you make you crust discussing day in day out, to actually listen to them, to amplify them, to give them prominence about your own, are you actually going to achieve change, or are you working to maintain the status quo, to ensure your organisation keeps getting a seat at the big boys table, the funding grant, because you tell them what they want to hear and let them make the bare minimum change. You get your car lease renewed for another year, your seat in parliament, and they system keeps ticking along while nothing really changes and people continue to suffer.
Palestinians don’t have ten years for nice little motions that maintain the status quo, that uphold apartheid Israel. Homeless people are dying in the cold, but, sure, worry about how raising welfare to the poverty line might affect inflation (when your committees say it won’t) and continue to cosplay homelessness in CEO sleepouts in secure underground carparks, while you have the power to legislate meaningful, immediate change.
So, as a well meaning white woman, I need to step back and reflect on how I’m enabling the status quo by allowing other voices to be silenced because they don’t use the right words or have the right educational background. Am I just paying lip service to lived experience or am I amplifying the knowledge and strengths of people whose voice may not be so polite and tidy, but have the knowledge and the experience to express the need for real reform.
Even if you think you can say it better, stand back, give someone else a chance. They may very well be better than you. Isn’t that scary?
