Pro Bono Australia 

A candidate at the podium for every fuck given about queer rights

We're erased from the Census and political consciousness.

Buzzfeed News

Child abuse in Australia is at crisis levels, with the effects on the children and the adults they'll grow up to be horrific and lifelong. But 35% percent of Australians don't view child abuse as a big issue, with parents more likely to say it's not a big deal. Perhaps that's why police patrol public transport to catch fare evaders and strip search children - and meanwhile child protection services are underfunded, understaffed and overworked.

The New Daily

Too often, maternity care in Australia seems to reflect a desire for a healthy baby at all costs, without taking into account the health and wellbeing of the mother.

Eureka Street

We're always hearing about the so called inner city elites but a lot of people in inner city Sydney are doing it tough:

Single parent families in Kensington, Auburn North, Pyrmont-Ultimo, Sydney-Haymarket, The Rocks and Waterloo had the highest rates of poverty in Sydney, likely due to the large amounts of public housing in some of those areas.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Mental health issues can sometimes occur for no apparent reason, when life seems to be going well. But there's a strong correlation between mental health issues and stress, poverty, unemployment and insecurity. The punitive Centrelink and jobactive sysyems are literally making people sick - and the mental health system can't help them. Excellent reporting from Rick Morton.

If Scott Morrison actually cared two tiny mouse droppings about reducing rates of suicide, he'd do something to fix this. He won't though.

The Saturday Paper

Anyone who's had to deal with Centrelink knows their onerous requirements, including supplying details of your relationship status. This is especially true for people receiving the single parent's pension. Centrelink is determined that only the good kind of single parent receives the single parent's pension, and recipients can now be asked not just to prove that they are not in a relationship, but to supply sworn statements from third parties to verify their unattached status. Even given that, Centrelink still reserves for themselves the right to decide a sole parents pension recipient is in a relationship, and cut off their payments. It's a relic from the moral climate when sole mothers' benefits were introduced, and it was felt that whilst we had to keep those blameless mothers and children who'd been abandoned by their husbands from starvation, we certainly couldn't encourage feckless hussies to shack up and have illegitimate children with a succession of men, and so they would restrict the pension to the good kind of single mother, who devoted herself to a life of chaste motherhood in return for genteel poverty instead of outright destitution.

But of course, real life is far more complicated than that, and whilst Centrelink fraud inspectors are driving past the houses of single mothers to check there's no men's underwear brazenly hanging on the washing line, there's all sorts of other issues, not least of which is whether is someone assumed to be financially responsible for children that aren't theirs just because they're in a relationship with the children's mother?

Turns out the United States is ahead of this on this one. Over fifty years ahead, in fact. Before it was replaced in 1996 as part of Bill  Clinton's "Welfare to Work" drive, the main payment supporting American single parents was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC was originally introduced in 1935, but came with what was known as the "man in the house" rule, that aid was conditional upon whether there was a man living in the home. This rule was used to police the sexual morality of women, particularly women of colour, by ensuring they weren't shacking up. The rule was struck down by the Supreme Court ruling of King v. Smith in 1968, which held that just because a man was having a sexual relationship with a woman in her home, he could counted as a substitute parent - and was under no legal obligation to support her children. From that point on, it wasn't enough for a woman just to be in a romantic relationship with a man; aid could only be restricted if a man was in a parental relationship with her children.

The question of a parental relationship is one that is completely pushed aside in Centrelink's rules on the single parent relationship. Of course there are many step parents who have loving parent-child relationships with children who aren't biologically theirs; but Centrelink assumes that the moment a person moves in with a parent, they automatically assume all financial responsibility for their children, regardless of whether that person likes or supports or loves the kids at all.

That, or Centrelink just enjoys its right to slut shame single mothers too much to give up now.

This is an issue that needs more public discussion. Heck it could be an issue that could even unite feminists and men's rights advocates. Feminists want an end to policies that shame and impoverish women; men's rights advocates rail against men being made to financially support kids that aren't theirs. Either way, it's a crappy situation and for once, it's an area of welfare reform where Australia really needs to catch up to the US.

We care about violence when it happens to men in public, but give women "safety tips" when they are the victims.

Independent Australia

As someone who has been left at the office more than once to take calls while coworkers went to celebrate the Melbourne Cup after I refused to do the same - let alone the time the celebration was in the office and I was told watching the race was not optional - I'm very glad to hear of companies, pubs and other organisations getting behind a horse (and gambling and public drunkenness) free Melbourne Cup day.

How companies with purpose can use Melbourne Cup day to promote their values

5 ways to celebrate on Cup Day without hurting horses

Listing of "nup to the cup" events

Gaps in support approved, difficulty finding supports with the funding provided, a lack of suitable housing for people with disability all contribute to the shameful fact of 6,000 younger Australians living in aged care facilities - a number that has barely budged in the past decade despite the nationwide rollout of the NDIS.

Nursing homes, geared towards people at the end stage of life, are no place to provide the support, lifestyle and hope of younger people with functional impairments.

The Conversation

The NDIS is ideologically grounded in the idea of "choice". Rather than funding being allocated to service providers who decide what services people receive, in theory funding is given directly to people to choose what support they want for themselves.

What actually happens is that, left without guidance or even consistently applied legislation, NDIS participants are left to negotiate an arcane system of rules, providers, delays, decisions, reviews and regulations for themselves.


The ABC

 Younger people and people in rural and regional areas at most risk. 

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kirsten Gray, a Muruwari/Yuwalaraay child protection solicitor, Indigenous policy officer and former "care kid" on how the system meant to protect Aboriginal children instead perpetuates the pain and trauma. 

The Guardian 

https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2019/10/australia-is-bracing-for-a-tsunami-of-homeless-women/

The Conversation 

The use of isolation as punishment in juvenile detention falls under the wider ideology of punishment and control which we know to be harmful, but the widespread use of which continues.


Eureka Street

Indigenous X

The Mandarin

Opponents of the government's horrific Robodebt scheme have long been saying that it is arbitrary, cruel and driven by a reverse Robin Hood ideology - rob the poor to feed the rich.

Now claims by whistleblowers who have worked in the administration of Robodebts prove it.

Staff contracted from private agencies by Centrelink have spoken of an obsessive target driven structure where employees were pressured to conjure up debts at all costs - ignoring flaws in data, neglecting to ever inform debt recipients of the financial nightmare about to fall on them.

In the words of those tasked with dishing out the debts:

"It was very inhumane. It was all about the money, and we have to get those finalisations."

"It was all about the numbers. They would constantly say we are trying to adhere to the estimates that were provided to the Senate estimates hearing in relation to how many finalisations would be completed within a given period for the sake of trying to recoup revenue. That's what determined how many finalisations each division needed to achieve. That's all that mattered, meeting those benchmarks. It was toxic."

"I know a lot of compliance officers would just let the phone ring one or two times and hang up. Some even would say they made (the phone calls) but they don't. You don't want anyone to answer because then you are not going to get your finalisations for the day."

"I had people on the phone to me in tears. Because they were saying to me, 'I have done the right thing, I have always reported my income, why are you doing this to me now?'"

And, if you have a strong stomach, from Department of Human Services Manager Hank Jongen:

"Staff working on income reviews are not required to finalise a prescribed number each week. Like any service delivery organisation, we review performance to meet government priorities, but always put people at the centre of our work."

I'm sure he does prioritise people - the people who donate to the Liberal party. The people on $200K+ who think they should pay less tax. The people who think scraping back barely more money than the scheme costs to administer is well worth the point of punishing those who had the gall to be poor in the first place. This revolting scheme should end. But it won't.

9 News

ACOSS have surveyed Newstart recipients asking what a $75 a week increase in payment would mean to them. The answers are a heartbreaking indictment of a wealthy country that allows vulnerable people to go hungry and scared whilst increasing the coffers of the wealthy.

“I would have enough to rent privately and get out of this abusive situation of where I live.”

“I could get more food for my kids.”      

“I would be able to replace clothing which has worn through use.” 

“I would be able to keep my car, which would increase my chances of getting work!”

“I’d be less afraid of the postman (and the bills he brings)!”

“I could feel like a human again.” 

ACOSS

One in ten Australian children care for a relative with a substance use issue or disability - and they need more support to stop them from falling behind in school. 

The Conversation

1. Make the right to housing law;


2. Change the culture on housing;


3. Tackle the issue before it reaches crisis point;


4. Taylor solutions to Australia;


5. Rally the community sector.

Pro Bono Australia

Aboriginal children are fifteen times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be removed from their parents by child protection services.

Are Aboriginal parents fifteen times more likely to abuse their kids? Do they love them fifteen times less?

Once you remove that absurd notion, the real agenda behind child removals emerges.

The Guardian

More essential reading... excellent long read by Robert Kuttner of American Prospect.

"Neoliberalism’s premise is that free markets can regulate themselves; that government is inherently incompetent, captive to special interests, and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market; that in distributive terms, market outcomes are basically deserved; and that redistribution creates perverse incentives by punishing the economy’s winners and rewarding its losers. So government should get out of the market’s way.

Now, after nearly half a century, the verdict is in. Virtually every one of these policies has failed, even on their own terms. Enterprise has been richly rewarded, taxes have been cut, and regulation reduced or privatized. The economy is vastly more unequal, yet economic growth is slower and more chaotic than during the era of managed capitalism. Deregulation has produced not salutary competition, but market concentration. Economic power has resulted in feedback loops of political power, in which elites make rules that bolster further concentration.

The culprit isn’t just “markets”—some impersonal force that somehow got loose again. This is a story of power using theory. The mixed economy was undone by economic elites, who revised rules for their own benefit. They invested heavily in friendly theorists to bless this shift as sound and necessary economics, and friendly politicians to put those theories into practice."

AlterNet

Spoiler alert: yes, it is.

The Conversation

A "poorly targeted and infeasible" scheme to recruit Newstart recipients to fruit picking jobs has been scrapped after finding positions for just 6% of intended recipients.

The New Daily 

We've seen it with spikes on the ground, benches you can't lie down on and sprinklers in parks. Now governments are using technology to criminalise the homeless, with a new app in the NT encouraging people to dob in rough sleepers.

The Daily Mail