Tag: politics

My submission to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 [Provisions] inquiry

When they give you 24 hours to respond to an enquiry, you don’t have time to do the referenced researched work of an advocacy organisation, so you smash out something, so in true “egirl and activist” form, here’s what I just sent in:

To the Committee

I have lived, worked and socialised in online places since 2000. As an older teenager, I met lifelong friends on early forums, including people who were younger than the 16 year old proposed social media ban age. Most of these young people could hold their own online then, and most teenagers these days are more literate in social media and online safety than older adults. They are able to access information to help them navigate life through online services. Forums like the ones I accessed as a teen and now ones that are serving the same function on social media sites are a lifeline to marginalised young people. It is where young queer kids can access information on what life can be like outside of heteronormative suburban Australia. It is where young people with mental health issues can access support and information about how to support themselves and their peers. It’s where young carers can access support for roles they are thrown into way too early. It’s also just a place to have fun, explore interests, and learn to be yourself.

Yes, children and adults use social media to bully others. But people have managed to do that in other formats and “IRL” (in real life) as long as we’ve existed. There’s always an other, and those others – the queer kid, the Autistic teen, the otherwise different kid – will often be bullied, and online worlds are where they are able to find their kin and often find safety and know they are not alone.

My 15 year old nephew is autistic and has used social media – mostly Instagram and Facebook – as a way to explore his interests and has developed many skills and his language has developed greatly this way.

My 13 year old niece has reassured me that teenagers will find ways to communicate with each other in positive and negative ways even with any bans brought in – whether this is by lying about ages, by getting their parents to sign them into things, or just making new ways to communicate and finding new apps that escape regulation.

As an adult, I’m wary of giving over personal details to multiple companies based all over the world in order to continue to keep in touch with friends and colleagues. My work is based online, and I use X, Bluesky and Facebook daily in that work. Work that helps support marginalised adults and children in the welfare system. Social media is a literal lifeline for many poor people who, with a basic smartphone, can now access support and information for their disabilities, to escape violence, to deal with bureaucracy, to access food banks, and much more. This is not support that should be kept from someone because they are under 16 or don’t have or want to share their identifying documents with international companies.

Security breaches of trusted companies such as Optus left many who normally wouldn’t think twice about whether it was safe to give such information over questioning whether their identities were safe.

A social media ban for under 16s is unworkable and potentially harmful to young people who will lose access to support networks and resources. Yes, there is harm done online, but harm is done everywhere, and by driving kids underground you are not going to protect them.

 

This bill should not be passed, full stop.

Kind regards

Fiona Moore

e-girl and activist

phonakins.com

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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

 

As your local Eternally Online Elder Millennial, I volunteer to be Social Media Envoy to the Albanese Government

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.

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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