A Serious Process

The Welfare to Work scheme is revolting. I have spent a considerable amount of time on the phone today trying to refer someone to a service without allowing a really intrusive assessment to take place. Centrelink is becoming (or has it always been?) the devil's agent, and the staff sound apathetic and incompetent (I remember some of the staff in the Fitzroy office having multiple facial piercings, and someone in Centrelink on Sydney Rd telling me to make up some jobs I had applied for when I hadn't finished filling in my form. It was close to Christmas, and one of the jobs I claimed to have applied for on my dole form was as Father Christmas). Remember our social security services in the 80s and 90s, when you could be unemployed, or seriously fucked up, in privacy and with dignity? Welfare to Work: for god's sake, there are reasons that some people can't work, or stay employed. Are we trying to homogenise to the point of making ourselves ill?

I was reading an article in Broadsheet about the unsustainability of human living. Sometimes I feel as if everything is fucked and like we are committing the most irresponsible of acts regularly. I saw that someone had written an article called I Hate Australia which made me think that perhaps things aren't so bad. As long as we are still able/allowed to hate who are, and criticise ourselves and our actions, surely things can't be too bad? Although I feel that we are dangerously close to losing our critical capacity through systemic and debilitating selfishness and our capacity to 'think globally' yet not 'act locally' (maybe that was a dangerous statement. After all, Australians pour money into foreign aid, yet balk at the idea of examining povery and inequity within our own country. I too am guilty of it: I donate to Amnesty International, and I suppose it makes me feel good - or at least alleviates some guilt. Really I should be forming a seditious army and researching successful mutinies).

Just because all the cool countries do it doesn't mean that democracy is the best model. And perhaps there is no model that can work long term, or ever. I too Hate Australia to a large extent, because I don't think it is a just or equitable place. I hate Centrelink, and I hate the Howard government and feel that nothing I do or say can make any difference. Does that matter? Perhaps I make a habit of viewing myself with a gratuitous significance. If I don't I won't bother living.