Screw the disabled! Labor shows their truly depressing colours. Again.

 Amazingly, there are still people who believe the traditional red of the ALP is that of their hearts bleeding for people experiencing hardship and disadvantage. And whilst some of these people are talkback radio hosts egging their audience on to a fury of be-spittled rage, some are actually Labor supporters who believe their party is on the side of the right and good. 

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Pauline Hanson Weaponises Her Wilful Ignorance. Why Can’t We Call It Out?

This post was originally published on New Matilda. Reproduced with permission.

Pauline Hanson has learnt nothing. With the recent bushfire crisis and the outpouring of evidence, from the Rural Fire Service to bushfire experts from around Australia, stating that the fires were largely not caused by arsonists or lack of fuel reduction burns, but were exacerbated by climate change, Hanson has used her media platform to repeat the false information spreading on social media via another of her regular spots on Seven Sunrise.

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Robodebt Robbery

Bell Epoch isn't a personal blog. I already have one of those. This blog is for news and commentary on social issues. But I find myself at the centre of a social issue right now. I've got a Robodebt story, and this one's a doozy.

If you're not familiar, Robodebt is the government's practice of using data matching software to find discrepancies between information clients have provided to Centrelink to claim payments, and data from other government agencies such as the tax office and child support agencies. I hate to break your faith in the information technology capabilities of the government that can't even get the Census right, but Robodebt has come up with lots and lots of errors. Robodebt has the delightful habit of seeing a Newstart recipient has picked up a few weeks of work, deciding they must have earned that much every week all year, and slapping them with a debt for the government payments that Robodebt decided the person wasn't entitled to because the computer has decided they were working when they weren't.

Look, it's kind of fair that the government wants to get money people claimed when they weren't entitled to it back. The problem is Robodebt shoots first and asks questions later. Debts are automatically issued with no warning, no explanation, and little chance to challenge or appeal. And if Robodebt decided there's a debt, they can just help themselves to your money and good luck getting it back. 

In my case, I've been issued a debt no one can explain or justify, and only found out about when Centrelink helped themselves to my $2,500 tax return. 

Back in January, I got a letter telling me I had a $7,800 debt for overpayment of Family Tax benefit dating back to 2015. Wait, what? This was when I was freshly separated from my husband. I'd lost just about everything I owned, was at uni, not working, and had 25% care of my son. I was scraping by on Austudy and a partial family tax benefit and after paying rent, often had to choose between the train to uni and food. But I was scrupulously honest and accurate in what I told Centrelink. Now the government decided I had too much money back then? I called them. No one could tell me why there was a debt but they promised it would be appealed and someone could get back to me. 

So I left it there. I've had a lot of stuff going on this year, and it did kind of slip my mind. I'm working full time, not on Centrelink payments at all, and don't log into My Gov much cause I've no need to. Apparently Robodebts can be enforced to stop you leaving the country but I had no issues doing so in May. I got another letter at some stage saying I had a $300 debt, and figured my initial debt had been reviewed and reduced to that amount. Fine, I didn't know what the debt was but by now would probably have paid it to save myself dealing with them.

Fast forward to July. I completed my tax return, looked forward to a decent refund of $2,500, which was needed for...stuff. I don't earn a tonne of money, live pretty frugally (my American trip this year was done on the cheap...two star hotels, all public transport and walking, eating one meal a day plus apples and chips) and really needed my tax back, not to mention my beloved 16 year old cat needs thyroid treatment. I spent most of my monthly pay from work paying off some outstanding debts cause hey, tax refund coming soon right?

On the 17 July I got a My Gov letter telling me the original debt stood, now bumped up to $8000 with interest.

On the 18 July, the ATO processed my tax refund and transferred it all to Centrelink to pay off my debt.

So I've been calling. On 19 July the Centrelink debt team told me apparently, maybe, the debt was for overpayment of rent assistance. Wait, what? Where are you saying I falsely claimed rent assistance? I asked what addresses they had on file for me, and the guy on the phone read out my addresses and the dates I lived there - which was the completely accurate info I gave them at the time, along with my leases. Apparently though, they'd look into it, and if I gave them all my rental information again maybe the debt would be waived. Also just maybe I could get some of my tax refund back whilst it was being appealed. So I tracked down and uploaded all my rental info again, along with bills to support why I needed the money back. 

I also emailed several politicians, including my local member Tanya Plibersek. The only one I heard back from was Senator Rachel Siewert, the Greens Senator from WA, who has been doing great work campaigning against the shitty Robodebt system. Her office has been absolutely lovely, and will raise my case with a review officer.

And I started getting angry. How very dare they just announce a debt and take my money. Right at tax time - suspicious much? How can a stupid computer algorithm raise a debt and take my money with no chance for me to appeal first?

This Thursday 25 July I rang Centrelink again. The debt recovery team told me I'd have to speak to the families line. The families line weren't entirely sure why the debt had been raised, but they seemed to think it might be related to my child care percentage from 2015-2017. So now if I want to challenge the debt, I have to try and prove how often my son was in my care years ago, in the period immediately after the end of my marriage, when I was forced against my will to leave my son with his father. As the 2.5 hour call came to an end, they also told me my case wasn't being appealed from the call six days prior, but they'd raised an appeal now, and oh yeah, you can't get any money back in the meantime.

And that was where I lost it. 

I have to go back to the most painful time in my life - separated from my child, one of the worst things that can happen, a horror so raw I mostly block it from my mind - and try to prove the pitiful amount of time I got to spend with him, when I wish it had been all the time. 

I felt the life I had built for myself, working, budding as a stand up comedian, a lovely home, hope when I haven't had hope for so long - crumbling away. I had worked so hard for nothing. I was rewarded for having a go by the government making my money go away. 

I am broke until I get paid in two weeks - I'm not asking for anything and I'm not crowdfunding. I want my money back. The trouble is I can't even precisely challenge the debt because no one can tell me the data mismatch that triggered it. No one can tell me exactly what the debt is for. The government won't divulge the discrepancies in data matching they look for, for fear people will exploit it.

They're free to exploit us though. All of us. Robodebt is extortion. No other organisation can decide you have a debt, refuse to fully explain it, and steal your money leaving you scrambling to work out why let alone get it back.

Right now I'm waiting. Waiting for the appeal, waiting for my complaint to be responded to*, waiting in hope Senator Siewert's office can get somewhere I haven't been able to. And I'm at an advantage here. I have a degree in social policy and a decent knowledge of the political system. What of the people who don't have that particular bureaucratic literacy? Robodebt targets the vulnerable, and worse; it targets those who have been on government payments and gone on to working, stealing what they earned away.

Sometimes I feel like I'll end up like this guy. I don't want to. I don't want any of this. I just want my money back. People have mentioned legal action, class actions; I'm not thinking that far ahead. I'm so heartsick sometimes I'm battling one hour at a time, and even if I get my money back it's been so utterly shitty.

* If you have received a Robodebt, do make a formal complaint. The government has used the low rate of complaints to prove "the system is working". Thousands of complaints might get their thumb off the scale a bit. 

Media focusing on defects in new apartments; ignoring many more forced to live in substandard housing

Australia has an excess of housing, but many are forced to live in crowded, unhealthy and dangerous rental property due to high rents and unstable employment.

The Conversation

Labor must abandon its hatred of the Greens and support raising Newstart

Even as Labor continues its bizarre lurch to the right under Anthony Albanese, it's time for them to stop playing politics with the lives of the most vulnerable Australians and support an increase to Newstart.

The Guardian

The weird psychology of Barnaby Joyce and the Right

Oh, for a skilled political journalist to have handled the Channel 7 interview with former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and his former staffer turned partner Vicki Campion last night. Then maybe we would have had some answers to the questions that really matter - or at least had those questions asked in the first place. 

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The appalling legacy of Jocelyn Newman

Howard government minister, political matriarch, social reformer and Godmother of Centrelink Jocelyn Newman passed away over the weekend at the age of 80.  Don't go to a Centrelink office to express your grief, though; security guards are trained to surround you if you cry. Instead, I thought we'd take a chance to reflect on Ms Newman's terrible legacy.

No, not him.

When I refer to Jocelyn Newman as a social reformer, it is not a compliment. Ms Newman was architect and engineer of Centrelink, the interface of the Australian welfare system. Centrelink was established on Ms Newman's watch in 1997, combining several previous government departments such as the Department of Social Security and the actually useful Commonwealth Employment Service into a one stop shop of human misery. It's worth reflecting that it whilst the Liberal party claims to be for individual choice and small government, it was a Liberal government who created a horrifying byzantine bureaucracy. They labelled it all under the auspices of choice but for Australia's disadvantaged, the "choice" means submitting to the routine humiliations of Centrelink, or resorting to poverty and potential crime. And for all the rhetoric of a single government agencies reducing inefficiency, duplication and waste, the myriad sections of Centrelink are often completely separate from each other, unable to access each other's systems or even contact other departments.

A full account of the miseries Centrelink uses to punish those who require its services would be depressing to write and tedious to read. The mainstream media brings us frequent accounts of Centrelink woes, sometimes ironically, such as in this article from the Daily Telegraph about the Welfare Super Bludger, which is not a really shit new children's superhero but a mythical recipient of Newstart allowance with the article highlighting one putative job seeker who stuffs up. (Apparently the guy misbehaved at 99 job interviews. How does anyone get 99 job interviews in a single year, let alone through employment service providers?!). There's little indication of larger issues, such as the cost of all the monitoring, the fact that people with disabilities are largely forced to rely on Newstart (and comply with "mutual obligation" requirements) instead of receiving the disability support pension let alone basic problem the ratio of jobseekers to jobs. 

It all feeds in to the myth of the welfare bludger, whom everyone seems to know - any facebook post about the low rate of Newstart is flooded with irate commentators describing their neighbour who's been on the dole for years, spending all day playing video games, getting tattoos and going on holidays - triggering endless audits and crackdowns that but never shows up in audits. When there are not enough jobs to go around - especially with the loss of blue collar and unskilled employment - demanding job seekers comply with mutual obligation requirements is a farce. Requiring job seekers to show up at an office for a day a week applying for jobs that don't exist without addressing any of the reasons why they became unemployed serves little purpose other than to punish the job seeker for being unemployed in the first place. It's not at least giving them a chance or getting them out of the house; it is demeaning, humiliating and horrible.

And today we won't even get started on the changes to granting of the disability support pension with insanely restrictive criteria forcing thousands of ill and injured people to deal with the job search system and providers with no understanding of disability - again, all to catch out the mythical bludger:

From July 2016 to Nov 2017 the department of human services conducted 30,056 reviews of people on disability welfare and only found 16!!!! who were wrongly claiming $$. pic.twitter.com/9CVL7OWd9C

— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) March 1, 2018

"The best form of welfare is a job" is the homeopathy of social services. It doesn't work and it makes no sense, but its adherents cling to it with religious fervour and become defensive and angry when challenged.

Jocelyn Newman cannot of course solely be blamed for the sorry state of affairs for Australian job seekers today, just as Centrelink cannot really be blamed for the policies they are forced to enact, like denying dying people the disability support pension. It's takes an entire government, and their mindset of the disadvantaged as a societal evil writ in policies punishing the poor for their very existence, for that. (Not that Labor is ever much better; witness the Gillard Labor government turfing single parents, regardless of training or childcare or anything else, off single parenting payments and onto Newstart).

In truth, it's been decades of bloody minded adherence to neoliberal policies in spite of all evidence that has created the whole welfare hell; but in creating Centrelink, Jocelyn Newman opened up a corporatised, centralised portal to that hell.

It's worth examining how far the current Australian welfare system has strayed from the ideals under which it was established in the days after World War Two: 

"The moment we establish, or perpetuate, the principle that the citizen, in order to get something he needs or wants and to which he has looked forward, must prove his poverty, we convert him into a suppliant to the state for benevolence.

That position is inconsistent with the proper dignity of the citizen in a democratic country. People should be able to obtain these benefits as a matter of right, with no more loss of their own standards of self-respect than would be involved in collecting from an insurance company the proceeds of an endowment policy on which they have been paying premiums for years."

Which raging lefty socialist uttered these words? Why, it was Robert Menzies. Now there's a legacy I'd like to see revived.

A safe bet the IPA are dangerous idiots

An astonishing 76% of non-casino poker machines in the world are in Australia, a it was revealed this week. What was even more astonishing was the reaction of the IPA to calls for a ban. It's not so surprising that the far right/libertarian IPA are against a ban, but what was weird and creepy here was the logic of IPA policy director and former Young Liberals president Simon Breheny:

“Yes, it might mean it solves the pokie problem, but it doesn’t give them the tools they need to solve the issues that might come up in their life down the track,” he said. “You’ve got to give people the mental tools to manage those risks themselves.”

Apparently the billions of dollars poured into poker machines each year is a valuable learning experience and if we take them away people will never learn to sort their own problems out.

Of course problem gambling using poker machines disproportionately affects older people and those from socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Maybe what they need is more poker machines to teach them how to manage their disadvantaged lives and achieve their goals.

Heck if poker machines are such a great tool for teaching life's lessons maybe we could send people conscripted to work for the dole to play the pokies. Why not get pokies into schools! That ought to teach kids how to take responsibility for their lives!

Really though. The IPA are a pack of moron flavoured biscuits and their risk management BS is to the psychology of addiction what Pete Evans is to health and nutrition. It's not enough to just ignore them. This dangerous rubbish needs to be called out.

Why I never became a social media star

Hey guys! I've been offline for so long. It was intended to be just an internet free (or internet less) time while I was doing my exams, but then I started having a series of painful issues with my internet provider. I won't bore you with the details but I was offline for three weeks. Don't worry though I have heaps of amazing posts I'm so excited to be able to share with you do social media personalities know how fake and ridiculous that sounds when they say it. I can't write like this. 

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Hanson fails School of Hard Knocks over citizenship rules

We all know that right wingers aren't much for tertiary education. They learn all they need to know at the School of Hard Knocks, which teaches such useful skills as dismissing peer reviewed research as left wing mumbo jumbo, reckoning global warming is a hoax cause it was far hotter when they were young, and declaring young people these days are just lazy cause they have eight separate mates who all run their own businesses and can't get any apprentices to show up to work.

There's also honours in how every illegal asylum seeker gets given a house and pension by the government and that Halal food increases Al Qaeda's morale. Unfortunately, the course in learning where apostrophes go and the difference between to, too and two had was cancelled when they had to fire the guy hired to teach it after finding out he was a moderate cultural Muslim.

But with their veneration of life's experiences over book learning, you'd think Pauline Hanson would have been a suppository of wisdom in the current maelstrom of politician after politician being disqualified from the parliament after being revealed as dual citizens, in violation of Section 44 of the constitution.

Hanson lost her fellow One Nation senator, the man she described as her "backbone", Malcolm Roberts. Roberts, despite his declarations that "I can feel it in me waters" that he was solely Australian, turned out to be a dual UK citizen and thus ineligible to sit in parliament, a devastating blow to the 77 people who voted for him.

But the thing is, Pauline Hanson and One Nation had been here before. In 1998, the election of Heather Hill as a One Nation candidate for Queensland to the Senate was challenged on the grounds that Hill was a citizen of a a foreign power - the UK. Despite Hill's creative defence that the United Kingdom is not a foreign power to Australia:

On 23 June 1999 the High Court of Australia, sitting in its capacity as the Court of Disputed Returns, decided in Sue v Hill, that Hill's election was invalid because, at the time of her election, she was still a citizen of the United Kingdom. The case clarified for the first time that the United Kingdom had become a power foreign to Australia.

So Hanson had been through all this before. And, strongly in support of the constitutional law, she reckoned Senator Roberts was dinky di:

"I am strongly of the belief that everyone in this chamber should be an Australian citizen, should not have allegiance to another country and I truly do believe that of Senator Roberts," she said.

But it was complicated:

"It is a very complex case with regards to Senator Roberts. You don't understand the full situation, so therefore I'm not going to go into this. It will be decided by the High Court".

Hanson wasn't the only one of the opinion that the nuances of Senator Roberts's citizenship status were beyond the grasp of us mere mortals. He went on Sky News to chat to Paul Murray, the face of the hip young right, and Murray assured his audience that he had seen the million percent proof Roberts wasn't a British citizen, although neither of the people watching at home were allowed to have a peek.

It turns out that the complications here were that Roberts truly, cross his heart hope to die stick a needle in his eye believed that he was solely an Australian citizen, and he'd sent an email to a domain ending in uk.sydney just to absolutely super dooper double check.

Anyway, Roberts is out of the Senate to go spread his brand of merriment in Queensland state politics, but Pauline Hanson powers on. The point of all this is, she should have known better. Her First Class Honours from the School of Hard Knocks should have blessed her with the ability to recognise a pattern here and make sure her Senate candidates were actually solely Australian citizens not just pretendy ones. And maybe before she demonises the unemployed she could be a little more cautious about wasting millions of dollars obfuscating and breaking the law.