Diary of a Desperate Houso

Nicholas Cowdery slams Rees government on Ferguson amendment

2009-10-01T10:26:00.001+10:00

Nicholas Cowdery, the NSW Director Public Prosecutions, has criticised the Rees Labor Government's amendment to the Housing Act for the sole purpose of evicting Dennis Ferguson from public housing.

Addressing Politics in the Pub last Friday on the topic of "Police Powers Out of Control", Mr Cowdery decried what he called "an appeal to populism" and "quick political point-scoring by appealing to the lowest common denominator" in "the mindless belief that this will solve social problems".

Mr Cowdery reminded the audience of a history of similar single-target populist attempts by NSW Labor, including the legislation to extend the detention of Gregory Wayne Kable, later struck down by the High Court, and the more recent Bikie Legislation.

Mr Cowdery called for a national charter of human rights to counter short-sighted government erosion of civil rights.

OK, enough with this desperate attempt to sound like a cadet reporter with the SMH, and back to DH-ese.

What most shocked DH in Mr Cowdery's presentation was his revelation on the legislative precursor to Hitler's horrific "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". HItler's justification for his anti-jewish legislation was that he was forced to apply a legislative solution to hose down vigilantism in the community provoked by the presence of Jews, failing which, "a final solution" would need to be applied. Now there's a slippery legislative slope to hell!

Maybe those young whippersnappers, Nathan Rees and David Borger, (purportedly Leftists yet!!!) should learn some history! Generation X politicians are such a disappointment to DH. They seem to have entirely forgotten the terrible history of the early 20th century...

Why are they allowing the Daily Telegraph to dictate legislation?

All these pieces of legislation have achieved bugger-all beyond eroding the civil liberties of future generations. Makes yer heart bleed, dunnit?!

Gittins' slur on age pensioners in public housing

2009-10-01T01:24:00.003+10:00

[DH posted the following foaming diatribe to the SMH in response to a remarkably badly pitched and divisive article by Ross Gittins, Jobless fall by the wayside in crusade to harness grey power. Gittins intention was admirable enough. He wanted to lambast Federal Labor for its crocodile tears at the $7.50 rent hike imposed by NSW Labor on the $30 aged pension increase. He was quite right to denounce Jenny Macklin's arrant populism and hypocrisy, when Federal Labor has thrown unemployed people to the wolves. But was it really necessary to paint aged pensioners, especially those silvertail pensioners who live in public housing (!) as greedy and powerful, and add more fuel to populist flames?]

DH wrote (and has now polished):

Normally I'm an admirer of yours, Ross, but how on earth did you become a mouthpiece for the "divide and rule" game, especially when you're not even a member of the ruling class? Why are you sooling the lowest classes, read, the welfare class, to fight amongst themselves like so many desperate gladiators, while the truly wealthy get off scot free?

It's not the greed of pensioners that keeps Newstart at its outrageously low level. $30 is still a pittance. If you must point the finger at the parasites that are fleecing this country, couldn't you start with a plumper, more juicy bunch of bandidos, like bankers or real estate agents or land speculators or something?

You've got a point about Federal Labor though. I'm not an aged pensioner, by the way, but stuck on a barely subsistence level of Newstart, despite being highly qualified and applying for hundreds of jobs, and absolutely outraged at being abandoned by the likes of my local member, Tanya Plibersek, who I used to think so highly of, and whose election I worked towards. Now call this a cliche, but still I'd like to see my former heroine try to live off $130 a week. Not that I don't like Tanya personally, but the class struggle is the class struggle, and we're no longer on the same side.

Going after politicians is fair game, but you won't hear me begrudging pensioners their lousy $30 a week, or pitting those "silvertails" who you reckon live in public housing against the poor beggars living in private rental. It's not housos who caused their plight but greedy speculators and gutless governments who didn't and won't legislate to protect Australian citizen's right to decent, secure and affordable rental housing.

Relocating tenants for populist purposes

2009-09-23T21:09:00.002+10:00

"Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY"

Benjamin Franklin would have a fit if he was living in Australia.

Short-sighted populism again from hair-trigger jumpy NSW Labor, perfected by Bob Carr, chip chip chipping away at our essential liberties. (As a perfect example, Verity Firth just today dumped Iemma's and Della Bosca's idiot plan to fine and jail parents of truanting kids. A resounding chorus of "we told you so" from welfare and education groups is in order).

Back to Ferguson: couldn't the same result been achieved, without eroding all our civil liberties, by that other all-purpose impost on tenant's security of tenure, the policy of "relocating tenants for management purposes", which states "As a social housing landlord, Housing NSW has the right to ask any tenant to relocate to another suitable property, identified by Housing NSW, that meets their housing needs.", in other words, "anything goes" or rather "anyone goes if HNSW says they go".

Housing peaks comment on Ferguson amendment

2009-09-23T21:08:00.002+10:00

Comment on the Housing Amendment (Registrable Persons) Bill 2009

23 September 2009

For further information refer to Shelter NSW or the Tenants' Union of NSW

This is a brief comment on the Housing Amendment (Registrable Persons) Bill 2009 by the Tenants' Union of NSW and Shelter NSW. The Tenants' Union of NSW is the State's peak tenants' organisation and specialist community legal centre for landlord-tenant law. Shelter NSW is the State's peak low-income housing policy organisation.

We object strongly to the Bill.

The Bill would allow the tenancies of a specified category of tenants to be terminated, and for those tenants to be evicted, by agreement of the Police Commissioner and the Director-General of the Department of Human Services.

A tenancy may terminated without notice to the tenant, and with immediate effect. The tenant may be evicted, without notice and immediately, by the police.

The Bill provides no role for the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, or the courts, in the decision to terminate and evict. The Bill expressly prevents any review by the courts of the Commissioner's and the Director-General's decisions.

What the Bill provides for is summary eviction. It should have no place in New South Wales residential tenancies law.

The Bill is unnecessary. The Residential Tenancies Act already includes special provisions that allow Housing NSW to offer a tenant alternative premises and terminate their original tenancy

We believe the safety of children is best ensured by teaching children to recognise and report inappropriate conduct on the part of any adult – whether a family member, friend, neighbour or stranger.

[Note: DH endorses this statement except for the italicised article of faith above. Would that it were so simple!]

The Ferguson amendment

2009-09-23T10:05:00.000+10:00

So the ever-reactive NSW Labor government is taking to the Residential Tenancy Act with a shovel at the behest of the mob, who'd cut off their collective legislative nose to spite their neighbour's face.

That said, who wants to have a paedophile, or any crim, for that matter living next door?

Why not some innovative legislation for a change, pairing every crim discovered in public housing, with a crim from the North Shore? Let's demand that a suitable punishment for billionaires who commit tax fraud, money laundering, property theft, or big-time is to be required to billet a low-rent . Maybe even chain 'em together with ankle-braces for public appearances? Maybe one day, if justice is done, we cd even see a former Housing Minister 'tripp'ing along with a small-time stand-over man hobbled to his ankle.

Meanwhile, perhaps a room could be found for Ferguson at the Goanna* mansion?

*Aka the Packer paterfamilias, as described by the Costigan commission into organised crime. The Packer family being DH's favorite candidate for a good mobbing.

Mallard mallets media, mob madness

2009-09-23T09:54:00.005+10:00

As Dennis Ferguson gets his own personal piece of legislation, it's worth foregrounding this comment from the ever witty and incisive Garry Mallard, of the National Tenant Support Network. (See it in context below, under the Dennis Ferguson Dilemma)

Garry Mallard writes:
Ferguson is not a "Queensland paedophile" as has been suggested. We are not a nation of closed borders. Nor are we genetically disposed or endemic to any particular state. Ferguson is, if one must apply a label, an Australian paedophile. He is free to live in whatever state/territory he wishes, notwithstanding any travel restrictions that may have been placed upon him as a condition of his parole. Once resident in NSW - and for the purpose of this situation 'resident' can be read as 'present' - he is entitled to apply for public housing in NSW, if he meets the criteria.

The main function of public housing - under current policy - is to house those who, for whatever reason, are unable to find and maintain accommodation in the private sector. Lets see now, a man hunted by media and angry, poorly informed mobs...mobs whose ONLY source of information about Ferguson is the aforementioned and wholly trustworthy media -- a man who has coffins delivered to him and firebombs found in his yard -- a man who "law abiding" citizens have promised to torment, harass and otherwise subject to relentless abuse and attention until they have him out -- a man who, to anyone playing with a full deck of their own, is obviously afflicted with an intellectual disability and mental illness quite distinct from his perverse attraction to children -- a many whom even the Housing Minister and the Premier have sought to see out on his ear...a man who under all these circumstances has absolutely zero chance of finding and maintaining a tenancy in the private sector, and you are thick enough to wonder why he is eligible for public housing?

It's YOU, you and the media with your madness and obsessions, YOU have MADE him the MOST eligible human being in all Christendom! Congratulations, you must feel so proud.

For the record, when he was allocated the home in Ryde it was done in consultation with numerous agencies whose job it was to 'support' him. For support, read "watch" and monitor him. Here's a reality check for the people of Ryde. Until the moment you assembled your mobs and started to complain, you were, on balance of probability, safer from his perversions than any other community in the nation. That's not to say your community was immune from the influence of paedophiles in general - they were doubtless among your mates in the mob. But safe from Ferguson. Why? Ferguson has the highest profile of any criminal in Australia. People are not just watching him, they are actively looking for excuses to put him away again. Let me just point out here, that it's a matter of record that he has been lumbered with a number of charges since his release from prison, all of which he was acquitted of. Sloppy police work no doubt, but I digress... He enjoys a level of infamy not seen for many years and for this reason, should he be driven to offend again, surly he's unlikely to do it on his own doorstep? Isn't it more likely he'll offend somewhere where police won't knock on his door before looking elsewhere? Of course it is! If he is going to offend again, it will be somewhere other than Ryde.

I'm stunned to think that anyone thinks finding digs for him in the boonies, far from schools -- and children for that matter -- offers any sort of security. Do they think him too stupid to buy a train ticket, or board a bus? Has a phobia about public transport and Taxis I've not read about, does he?

If people don't like his ilk, they should lobby for tougher sentencing, or the return of the death penalty -- it matters little which, but it does matter that they should have the courage of their convictions and work to develop social policy to address their concerns. Mobs spoon fed every 'fact' by the least reliable source of information in the cosmos - the media - should not be permitted to engage in this process however, for they have already proven themselves too gullible; too stupid to be trusted with such a weighty responsibility.

Frontline Housing NSW staff pay cut again

2009-09-22T22:34:00.006+10:00

While job hunting on SEEK about a week ago, DH noticed that Housing NSW was advertising again for "strong-minded" staff, i.e. counter staff.

But their already miserable hourly rate has been cut since February from $23 to $20!

DH commented on this with dismay back then under the heading:

Wanted by D'oH: Strong minded social workers prepared to work for $23ph.

It's a sad commentary on how wages are being driven down as unemployment goes up. Pity the working class, with Centrelink whipping them from behind to force them to accept whatever employers feel like dishing out, and with a broken union movement and a toothless Labor party.

Spotless Inc, shoddy contractors, make dogs breakfast of maintenance program

2009-09-22T12:40:00.002+10:00

DH lives in a street that HNSW is currently repainting for the 3rd time in 4 years, despite that the houses were built of paint impregnated boards that were not supposed to be painted in the first place. (But having been painted once, will have to be repainted evermore).

This second repaint is because the first lot of contractors did such a terrible job just 2 months ago.

What a terrible waste of money, for a job that didn't need to be done in the first place, didn't need to be repeated just 4 years later, and was done in some cases in a colour that jars with the existing look of the buildings, thus cheapening their value even further. Makes you wonder whether the contractors managed to get a cheap joblot of paint somewhere

And it's no use complaining, apparently that the money could have been spent on things we really need. Apparently, with the "New Maintenance Program", money is locked in for specific purposes, in this case, presumably to give jobs to painting contractors who do not appear to have got any trade qualifications whatsover.

Who are these people, who descend on our houses, hacking, botching, and smearing their way through publicly owned property?

Is there some kind of black market exploiting recent migrants?

DH had to have her bathroom floor replaced, and when HNSW inspected, the job was so poorly done that they demanded it be redone

Since the stimulus package spend, every job DH has had done has had to be redone!

What's going on? Is it just DH's karma? Was she perhaps a jerry-builder in her past life? Or are we looking at a systemic problem?

And why is Spotless Inc getting paid a fortune to totally fail to project manage these apparently straightforward jobs?

Samples of contractor's handiwork

Disclaimer for the downwardly envious: If the money saved on this shoddy work was going to be used to rehouse one of the homeless, DH would gladly have done without.

Work includes - door hacked when it didn't fit on replacement (yes, the door in the picture is shut), waterproofing is smeared on willy-nilly, vanity basin set in at angle, ceramic tiles that look dirty even when clean, tiles unaligned (not shown).

DH wants to make clear that it is not HNSW's fault. They are trying to put things right. Actually DH has asked not to have the jobs redone as it's not worth the expense and further disruption. She is not that house-proud, and there are more urgent uses for the money elsewhere. Perhaps there are not enough skilled tradespeople around for the huge amount of stimulus work?

DH almost divides and rules herself

2009-09-22T12:26:00.002+10:00

After seeing the heart-breaking circumstances of homeless families living in trashy, exorbitantly priced motels, ($900 a week to be paid for by HNSW!), forced to pack up weekly and move out to apply for another weeks tenure, or being exploited by ratbag landlords, DH feels really bad.

Perhaps she should rename the blog? Compared to those people she is in heaven.

Should she complain about poor maintenance and HNSW inefficiency, for instance, when other people are in such desperate circumstances?

But she will resist the temptation to feel guilty.

When the Packer family, say, and all their idle rich free-loading cronies, feel guilty enough to start paying taxes, say, she'll shut up.

When the Labor party hits these wealthy parasites, and hits them hard, then she might consider feeling guilty about having a roof over her head.

With these dire circumstances, those in power, will be hoping that the poor can be divided and ruled, will be stupid enough to squabble amongst themselves over a few crumbs, while the rich go on being baled out, and allowed to speculate and carry on as before.

DH will continue to insist on speaking out critically on behalf of those who have managed to get a toehold in housing, however tenuous.

Yes, Virginia, there is a class struggle, and its getting pretty naked out there at the moment.

These people doing it tough are not Howard's euphemistic "battlers". They are simply the Australian working class, and the sooner "Labor" wakes up to whose interests they're meant to be protecting, the better.

4 Corners: Last Chance Motel: Whose fault?

2009-09-22T12:05:00.003+10:00

Anyone who watched this heartbreaking ABC doco about homeless families in NSW must be wondering: how can this have happened in a wealthy country like ours?

The fact that the Howard Government did nothing about Housing for 11 years cd have something to do with it.

Should Howard, and his Clayton's Housing Ministers (there was no housing ministry), be compelled to face a few restorative justice sessions with some of the 150,000 victims of his neglect? Guess he was too busy bashing the poor to give them a "hand up", let alone a hand out.

Then there are the immigration quotas of 168,000 per annum: where are these people going to live? Oh, yeah, 38 to a bedroom... Now there's a solution...

And now Labor cuts $750 million out of the Housing stimulus package while the silvertail schools get another paint job. There go 800 houses, which would house, (guesstimating), 2,400 people.

But according to some ninny who wrote into the ABC's comments page, one homeless couple have only themselves to blame because they were doing a TAFE course instead of running around like lunatics looking for non-existent jobs.

Dennis Ferguson Dilemma

2009-09-16T08:46:00.007+10:00

The broader context of the Dennis Ferguson story is that as a culture, we do not know what to do with the mentally ill, the criminally insane, or the radically neurologically different, and we know damn well that there are no easy answers.

We do not believe in dedicated psychiatric hospitals. Yet we dump people with psychiatric problems in public housing with who knows what support. If public housing fills up with enough mentally ill, aren't we going to end up with Claytons Psychiatric Hospitals, the psychiatric hospitals you have when you don't believe in having them, which means psychiatric hospitals with no services, no staff, no central office, no resources, no nothing. Apologies to the advocates for the mentally ill, but nothing describes it better than Free Range Psychiatric Hospitals

Both David Borger and today Barry O'Farrell have been grandstanding on this issue. You have to feel sorry for them, because whichever way you look, there are no easy answers, but leading populist stampedes, and giving aid and comfort to lynch mobs does neither of them credit.

Predictably, the vigilante role of the gutter press is despicable. How's this for a title from the Daily Telegraph: " Paedophile: Beware of the devil Dennis Ferguson next door"

Meanwhile, Callan Park, a sacred space, some say, for the mentally ill, is slipping out of the public's grasp. Here is an opportunity to do something creative, to create supported homes with communal facilities, perhaps onsite employment opportunities and support in place.

DH Comments on SMH Website here

Public Housing tenants in my experience are extraordinarly understanding, patient with and tolerant of their troubling neighbours, despite the fact that public housing estates have become dumping grounds for mentally ill people, drug addicts, and released prisoners, without sufficient investment in support services for them. Part of the reason is a decade's neglect of public housing by the Howard Govt, [who over its tenure ripped $3 billion out of the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement which funds the states social housing programs, and led to the current triage policy targetting housing to "those most in need"]. Partly it's the red tape associated with setting up the necessary support services, with years of pilot projects and evaluation reports. Nevertheless we as tenants understand better than most, and accept with good grace, that everyone has a right to accommodation.

There is no easy answer, but a decent society will not get off on hounding a few unfortunates while taking a "beggar my neighbour" approach, ie refusing to pay the taxes that support adequate solutions.

Labor betrays the unemployed

2009-08-11T12:05:00.006+10:00

Wasn't the Labor party supposed to be kinder to "battlers" than the Liberals?

Yet Kafkalink has hardly changed since Labor got into power. It's as punitive as ever, despite the fact that we now have a projection of 140,000 long term unemployed thanks to the global financial meltdown.

The weekly unemployment benefit for the victims of the global financial crisis remains at just $226 per wk, plus a small rent allowance.

How is anyone supposed to live off this? If ever the "deserving poor" deserved more, it's now!

Yet Labor did not see fit to boost this paltry sum in the last budget. Why not? Because they can get away with it. Because they have chosen the easy path of pandering to the downward envy of the resentful classes, in the hope of staying a percentage point ahead in the polls.

And then there was the rat-baggery of denying the long-term unemployed the $900 stimulus bonus, when they are the ones who needed it most, and would have spent it quickest to bail out local small businesses.

And just who are the long-term unemployed anyway? Mostly people with marginal disabilities, who are perhaps a bit slow, physically or mentally, or perhaps are mildly autistic and lack the social skills to "sell themselves" in a competitive market. Maybe they suffer from complex chronic conditions, poorly controlled depression/ anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue and the like, . And of course, being over 45 is a disability in its own right when it comes to finding a job. And these are the poor wretches who are denied the disability pension, in the name of saving the Treasury a measly $100 a fortnight.

And what is Julia Gillard, the Minister for Inclusion, doing lately about "including" unemployed people when they can't even afford the bus fare to the nearest community centre? The poor buggers don't even qualify for the Pensioner Excursion fare!

PS. Not that the disability pension is anything to get too excited about. After all the hoo-haa about the "massive" boost to pensions in the last budget, it's still only $285 per week.

Gutless Labor does nothing while banks gorge on pensions

2009-08-05T21:58:00.009+10:00

When is Federal Labor going to show some guts, and prevent the banks from charging impoverished pensioners $30 - 40 when their pension comes in too late to cover a direct debit of $10?

If nothing else, DH hopes that you will never look at a certain bank's logo in quite the same way again. Once again, they've taken $30 out of the miserable $120 a week she has to live on after rent, because her $40 quarterly insurance was taken out on midnight of the night she only had left $20 in her account.

1300 HOUSING endangering residents?

2009-07-27T21:20:00.006+10:00

~~Is 1300 HOUSING's lack of an emergency line endangering residents?~~

[This item has been revised due to a prescient if somewhat Hobbesian insight from a commentator (see below) who writes "... if an "Emergency" line was created, then you'd wait just as long on that as you do in the regular "Maintenance" line? An "Emergency" is the opinion of the caller...". "Anonymous" has a point. Accordingly, DH now offers this anecdote only as a footnote for the historians on the teething problems of 1300 HOUSING.

In a further development, DH hears that 1300 HOUSING's performance is improving with time, and congratulates HNSW]

DH has heard the following story from a neighbour. Now DH can't completely vouch for the common sense of the neighbour, but all the more reason to be worried...

The neighbour, lets call her Mrs X, claims she smelled gas leaking in her kitchen

Mrs X tried to get through to HNSW but the line was busy. ~~Since there is no emergency option, a~~ After hanging on for 20 minutes, Mrs X was unceremoniously cut off.

Mrs X next rang her commercial gas company, but they wanted her to fork out $85 which she did not have, so the gas company suggested she ring Housing to make an arrangement for payment... Meanwhile presumably the house was filling up with fumes...

Now panicking, Mrs X abandoned the house, and hopped on the next bus to Broadway office to sort it all out, a good 45 minute trip...

Pity the rest of us in the street if the house had blown up in the meantime!

Planet 1300 HOUSING

2009-07-16T16:18:00.002+10:00

Planet Housing NSW breaks free of its earthbound moorings and into the realm of pure theory

Correction: Your local office can still be contacted if you ring their original number. You will then end up on the 1300 HOUSING line. Choose option 3. If you're lucky and the line is not busy, you may get through. Then again, you may wait up to 20 minutes and end up with the call centre anyway.

Well, it's finally happened!

Housing NSW has now disappeared behind the 1300 HOUSING smokescreen.

And despite 1300 Housing's proud KPI of "every call answered in 3 minutes", a claim always taken with a grain of salt, DH has been trying for an hour to get through.

1st, a 20 minute wait before cut off. Then 3 cutoffs in a row. "Please try again later"...

Oh, and there is now no emergency line, so bad luck if the kitchen is flooding

The only thing HNSW managed to get consistently right in its cash-strapped past was that emergency maintenance was done promptly and efficiently.

Now with the New Maintenance Program's $Millions and its brave new efficiency measures, all that appears to be gone down the gurgler

And on the phone line, there is no option to sort the "Emergency" sheep from the "General Maintenance" goats.

DH has always hypothesised that communications in and out of Broadway Office
disappear into the Broadway Arm of the Bermuda Triangle.

Now it seems that the office itself has been sucked up into the ether.

Why is DH trying to ring HNSW anyway?

About a year ago, DH noticed that the bathroom floor was rotting and had begun to subside. Finally with the new maintenance money, it was replaced. But the plumbers who disconnected everything have not been back to reconnect the water since the job was completed last Tuesday. Daily calls to the Spotless foreman yielded promises to call back which never happened. Now the foreman has been replaced, and she doesn't have the new guy's number. DH would like to know what's happening. And as a concerned citizen, she would like to know if anyone is monitoring Spotless' performance. There are ungenerous mutterings from tenants asking if HNSW has given Spotless a licence to print money.

Twitter: You can follow DH's attempts to get through to
1300 HOUSING on http://twitter.com/desperatehouso
Yeah, almost as boring as sitting next to a phone for an hour.

(This post is forward dated tho the events happened on the 6th)

DH bales out

2009-07-15T19:55:00.008+10:00

As Mothership 1300 HOUSING prepares for take off to the furtherest regions of the galaxy, DH makes a desperate last minute decision to cut loose from the stratospheric heights of TP, bale out and rejoin her fellow earthlings.

Correction: CTTT and water arrears

2009-05-20T15:52:00.010+10:00

DH apologises for the story below. She got her facts wrong. Water rates are capped only for tenants who have no separate water meter. For those with a separate water meter, the charge is based on actual water usage, and can add up to more substantial amounts. And she has heard that the 600+ termination notices included but were not limited to water arrears. The real story is far more nuanced than she at first believed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

As originally published 20 May 2009

Can you believe that in the quarter to Dec 2008, the Department of Housing hauled over 600 tenants before the CTTT (the rental tribunal), just for falling behind on water rates?

According to the Brown Couch, the Tenants Union's blog:

Housing NSW made ... 633 applications for orders terminating the tenancies of public housing tenants for failure to pay water usage charges. Private sector landlords made no such applications – not a single one

What sort of arrears are we talking about to invoke the fearsome penalty of eviction?

Water rates are capped at $5.75 per week, so over a quarter, that suggests that the total sum for which a tenant may go through the trauma of a court hearing is under $75!

You've got to wonder how much such court proceedings cost the state by comparison.

Especially when we hear that no-one actually gets evicted despite having the full weight of the law on their shoulders. Why terrorise people with the risk of homelessness for such piddling amounts? Must a cannon be employed to shoot a mosquito?

Why not just shoot the unemployed?

2009-05-13T00:08:00.009+10:00

A modest proposal

The Federal Budget makes abundantly clear that despite all Australia's rich natural resources, wealth and creativity, 1 million Australians and their families are excess to requirements and can just bugger off.

Wayne Swan reckons we need to brace ourselves for a cool million unemployed. And they'll find themselves having to scratch by on $227 a week.

Let's face it, the nation can't afford to keep them on a living stipend, so why not show some kindness and put them out of their misery?

Most of the unemployed are a complete waste of space anyway, aren't they? Government figures show that 1/3 of 'em have a mental health problem. How unappealing!

Sure, we need to keep a few tame depressives on hand, a few Gary MacDonalds and Rebecca Gibneys to trot out at Logies and Black Dog fundraisers, but what's the point of the rest of 'em?

But wait! If all the non-singing, non-dancing mentally-ill are not just faking it, why aren't they on the Disability Pension? Possibly because they didn't even have the nous to show up to Centrelink's Work Capacity Assessment in a wheelchair, drooling.

Then there are those other wastrels, the over 50's. Thanks to the ever receding retirement horizon, unproductive boomers can now look forward to another couple of decades of fortnightly disciplining by surly Centrelink Gen-Y's.

Have these bludgers forgotten the lessons of Anzac Day already? Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori
How sweet and right it is to die for your country. So why can't they do the right thing? Why not encourage them to jump off tall buildings in tidy batches? Think of all the jobs it would create for street sweepers,funeral directors, fertilizer manufacturers, ambulance-chasers, and more.

Oh, you think it's not their fault that they're unemployed? You think there are systemic reasons for unemployment?

What are you, some kind of Communist?

Swine-led recovery?

2009-05-01T10:00:00.001+10:00

No, this is not a call for the return of John Howard. But maybe the swine flu will get Aussies to do what the bonus has failed to: spend our money on small business as we stockpile bags of rice and lentils. What are we gonna do for protein? How about chooks in the backyard? For too long, the Chinese have dominated avian flu exports. Let's show 'em some good old Aussie know-how.

Public Housing design worries

2009-04-19T12:20:00.003+10:00

The Federal government has reversed the housing neglect of the Howard years with their new housing stimulus package. NSW has been allocated about $2 billion for new housing. Let's hope Housing NSW are not running around like headless chooks, because they've got just 2 years to spend the 2 bill on 6000 new housing units.

Let's hope that in their haste they don't repeat the design mistakes of the past, or impose new 'big ideas" on us.

DH is worried that everyone is talking about getting max buildings for the buck, but no-one seems to be talking about design.

Housing NGO's are pre-occupied with economic and social welfare issues, and noone is talking architecture. Yet that is what affects houso's lives most.

Is Housing NSW consulting with stakeholders at all?

Who are the designers? What are their guidelines?