Life might have dealt you a crummy hand and before you know it you find yourself waiting forty minutes in a soft-green open plan room and there aren’t enough seats for the crowd of people being herded into the “waiting area” (read: herding pen) hoping you’ll get the least agitated customer service rep to help you lodge your Newstart, AusStudy, Single Parent Pension or Disability Pension Claim. You’ve got all your fingers and toes crossed.
You double checked you have all the right paperwork with you, but you’re still nervous and your palms are sweaty. In your mind, you’re praying to whatever God you believe in that they don’t lose your paperwork and cancel your claim, or the systems don’t freeze up, or that you’re not disabled enough, sick enough, unemployed enough or all round not-doing-it-tough-enough for the almighty customer service rep to grant you a menial means to survival for the foreseeable future.
The stakes are high.
The Morrison government is coming up with policies that dehumanise and degrade the people who receive welfare benefits almost every other week, blatantly disregarding proven studies that recommend the exact opposite of their ideas like drug testing recipients, cashless debit cards that restrict where you can use your benefits, enforcing longer waiting periods before being allowed to even apply for a benefit, cutting the entitlement amounts, and even suggesting that welfare recipients should be stripped of their benefits for participating in protests and subject to mandatory jail sentences …
Seriously, has Australia lost its mind?What is going on?
If we believe everything we hear in the media and from our government being a recipient of welfare is worst, most awful, horrible thing you could do. Being a dole bludger, a welfare king or queen rorting the Australian people of their tax dollars, holding the country back from financial prosperity with their wicked and bludgery ways…
I just don’t buy it.
My name is Ashleigh Rae and this season on Rigged, we’re diving in deep to investigate what the actual fudgenuggets is going on with the Australian social safety net that is Centrelink.
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