The smell of an oily rag – lived experience advocacy in Australia

If I never have to smell wheel bearing grease again I would be very happy. Vile stuff, with a distinct smell. But with the dramas of repairing the Corolla, I’ve gotta whiff of it, or worse had to touch it, every couple of weeks while my partner solves the problem of whatever that noise is now in the car.

I’ve managed to get around to the things I’ve prioritised – paid HSC supervision, a couple of groups, but it’s been great to have it back – though there’s always just one more thing, and CV joints may be next.

After the Brereton crap this week, my post about the burden placed on the vulnerable to repeatedly share their trauma for no outcome was shared again, and I’m out of ideas on how to make it better for people, but money always helps. Making sure your talent‘s costs are covered and then their time and expertise is also compensated for. Would you pay another expert for their time? or is someone else covering their time – say if they’re already employed to do that work and be that voice of experience? That doesn’t usually happen for lived experience advocates. If they’re currently living the experience, then they’re likely to  be casually employed and/or on welfare.  They’ll have caring responsibilities – to themselves and to others – so the time you need them there will involve having to shuffle those responsibilities if that’s at all possible. How helpful is a carer’s week lunch for a full-time carer without support to make that time off happen? They may also appear unreliable having to cancel or running in late, or having to attend to family during a zoom meeting. They may have a panic attack and have to leave early, or seem unfocussed for whatever reason. But that’s the reality of lived and living experience. It’s messy. But it’s still valuable and raw and while it won’t give you a neat answer to your question, it’s worth figuring out how to incorporate into your work. Nothing about us without us is not just a slogan it’s essential for delivering services and support and changing policy and creating legislation and anything that involves real people and not just theoretical economics.

Pingers is running for parliament. He has the best of intentions and is using it to amplify his current work – calling out dodgy real estate agents and land lords. It’s a hard decision to make to participate in the system that is so messed up. He’s been critised from all angles – selling out and going for parliament, fundraising to cover his personal and promotional costs, having legal qualifications and his own property. But the tshirts are cool, subversive and a great way to support him if you can afford to.

The two organisations I work with – the Australian Unemployed Workers Union and the Antipoverty Centre – both use donations and grants to support unemployed and otherwise marginalised activists in their work. This can look like providing money to cover food, petrol  or transport or parking costs to be able to be involved in activism and actions. They pay the people with lived experience for their time and expertise as speaker or to contribute to the never ending parliamentary enquiries. They both also pay people in poverty to write articles reasonably regularly for the Power to Persuade blog.

For me, money above my DSP goes to things like buying EveryPlate meal boxes so that I don’t have to use my brain power too much to plan and make meals that are still pretty healthy and yum. If I head out to an event, I’m usually written off for the rest of the day, so money for takeaway and to keep my stash of instant cup noodles and so forth helps because “fed is best” also applies to your local antipoverty campaigners.

I’ve also get to buy things like better monitors for my PC so I can have more windows and tabs open and my new monitors allow split screens very easily with is great for having documents open while working on the social media side of things – either crafting a tweet for Nobody Deserves Poverty (I’m employed 3 hours a week to do that thanks to grants and donations to AUWU) or my personal twitter and blog.

My current phone is a hand-me-down off an amazing tweep so I cold give my last phone to my step-son-in-law or wherever he fits in so he could be contactable for his bub and for the thrill of engaging with Centrelink. Though it may not work after the 3g shutdown, I’m yet to hear.

So yeah, if you read a post that resonates with you, share the hell out of it. If you can afford to, track down the author’s tip jar or paypal and chuck them money for a drink or a meal. It’ll always be appreciated. My support page is here.

Everyplate. Buy me dinner

 

We all make mistakes, but Brereton’s managed to go out of his way to make this one

Anyone else? Anyone else feel like screaming at every fucking point of the follow up (or lack of) from the Robodebt Royal Commission? Starting with there being 57 recommendations, not 56 as Labor and now Services Australia documentation repeating to themselves and us until it’s true.

We were always at war with Eurasia.

Then they only partially take one a few, nothing too core like dramatically raising payments or stopping the stigmatisation of welfare recipients so people wouldn’t just live in fear of Centrelink.

Today it’s that the NACC decision not to investigate the key villains for corruption was a “mistake” by Brereton and not neatly crafted with PR people for those he was excusing. That oh poor Paul made an oopsie. And he’s not even going to stand down let alone be booted out? No wonder I screamed and just once again felt that it was all predetermined and why bother pushing for justice when it is actually stacked against anything good coming from it, at least for the common person. Officials get themselves promoted on the back of the deaths of welfare recipients. Cool.

Seriously, if anyone has the fucking sealed section, I’m sure it’s ripe for leaking and someone can arrange something…

It’s a big week.

 

Hello HSC Maths, we meet again

I actually don’t have nightmares about maths exams, though they caused me many years of stress and tears in high school. It’s English that keeps coming back to haunt my dreams – scenarios such as having to re-sit the HSC papers otherwise they’ll take my degrees and years of work experience off me because I wasn’t validly in them. Or something.

I got a peek at the Standard and Advanced maths exams while supervising them Monday. They were the old Maths in Practice, Maths in Society and 2 Unit maths subjects from before the turn of the century. I did two unit in year 10, so that content was 26 years ago for me… gosh. I should have dopped maths after the 3 unit paper in year 11, but no, I was convinced (by who IDK) to continue to 4 unit and the horrors that came with that orange text book. As I said to the other supervisors on Monday, I failed the 4 unit exam by marks but it still scaled to mid nineties, so yeah, I’m told it was worth the feelings of failure.

I also confessed to the other supervisors, when they were saying they don’t understand why anyone would try to cheat, that I’d cheated in one maths test once – a Maths Olympiad paper in grade five, the sort of maths competition where the content was part of the HSC syllabus but they threw it at primary school kids to see what they could do. I really don’t know where the pressure came from in primary school for me. I felt like I HAD to top that exam for my school otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I was supposed to do. Just like how I cried when I didn’t “top” the Basic Skills Test maths (Think NAPLAN now) for my school. Even though it wasn’t a test that was meant to impact anything. This is also the girl who cried in Kindy cos she had to stay home sick because she thought she’d get behind, even though she was reading and comprehending at three years old.

Apparently I was more boisterous before Kindergarten and then my school reports from grade one started calling me timid. And I blame the strict Kinder teacher. While she may never have had to discipline me in her classroom, I saw what happened to other kids – she smacked them and put them in the store room and other things that terrified me – and that was enough to make me submissive and scared.

Isn’t it fun to reflect on what made you the way you are today?

Born to receive a teeny tiny silver spoon from Ozharvest

Oh how lovely, the King and Queen are here. Yeah, much excitement. They made it all the way out rural Parramatta today to meet the RFS and CWA… Yes, they may have still been rural when Victoria was queen, but certainly not now.

OzHarvest awards Camilla with ‘most prestigious’ order of the teaspoon Earlier on Tuesday, a delighted Queen Camilla accepted “the most prestigious order” ever bestowed by Australian food rescue charity OzHarvest – the order of the teaspoon – at its restaurant in Surry Hills this morning. Pool reporters following the royals have described how the silver gift – a small brooch with a crown at the end of a tiny teaspoon – was presented to the Queen when she sat down for lunch at OzHarvest’s Refettorio restaurant with regular patrons who come for a free vegetarian lunch made from rescued foods. When OzHarvest’s founder Ronni Kahn opened the box to show the brooch to the table, and travelling media, and present the “most prestigious order” – everyone in the small dining room oohed and aahed, loudly. “I shall wear it with pride,” the queen said, smiling.

Camilla made her way to have a vegetarian lunch with OzHarvest, since they say it was made from the usual daily cookup of rescued food does that mean someone missed out? Where in the budget does the tiny silver spoon go? is it paid for by the labour of the Sydney Street Choir performing for $150/ticket which they will not see? I did ask on Twitter whether they were paying the choir members or whether they were just using them. Pay your fucking talent, especially if you’re exploiting their story and goodwill for your charity. Or will they get a tshirt and have to go back to the foodbank queue in the morning?

A photo of Lidia Thorpe in a Keffiyeh
Queen

 

Sympathy for the Sober

Was it a fun night for you?Speeding down I-5, no cops on the mapScreaming out, “I’d die for you”But after all the stops and starts, crashes and carnageI’m just carsick

I’ve mentioned a couple of times how you get more sympathy for some things when you’re sober – some rightly so and some perhaps a little harsh. Some, like running your car up on the kerb – way more sympathy when you’ve done it because you’re anxious AF about something (finding a new rental in this case) than if you’ve been drinking – are extremely fair. Some like having an emotional meltdown gets less sympathy if there’s alcohol involved, even if many times it’s just tipping you over the edge of things that are there and crap regardless of your commitment to sobriety.

Got my copy of Mean Streak – Rick Morton’s Robodebt book… 

Done two mornings of supervision – the two English papers. Long mornings on my feet, being responsible. Only a few bad dreams reliving my own HSC. Caught the bus and the train. Which is okay, but doesn’t give me the freedom for anything outside of there and back. I’ve masked on the public transport, but didn’t in the school, so that may be where this snuffle is from. Hopefully it’ll resolve over the weekend and I’ll be good to go for an 8.15am start Monday for the maths exam, I’ll probably even be able to drive in as the brake pads just arrived. Along with a heap of porridge and dog treats that were on sale on my wishlist so I ordered them.

Antipoverty week is coming to an end. Very few mentions from the politicians, a few from the Greens. No use of the word poverty on Twitter by Albo since 2021, despite protesting in 2019 that the LNP wouldn’t say poverty during Antipoverty week

But then, Labor still had ambition in 2019.