Planet 1300 HOUSING

Planet Housing NSW breaks free of its earthbound
moorings at last, into the realm of pure theory

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.

Correction: CTTT and water arrears

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.

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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?

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 the single ones will just have to keep on scratching 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 these miserybuckets?

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 age, they can now can look forward to another couple of decades of fortnightly disciplining by surly Centrelink juniors. Who will egg there elders on to sign up for ever more courses, rework their resumes over and over, and keep applying for jobs that they don't have a hope of getting thanks to ageism.

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.

Why can't the irredeemably unemployed 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?

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

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?

I lost Rudd's $900 bonus on the Bells Line of Road

[Not really whining... writing a footnote for the social historians on how the NSW government screws the last drop of money out of ordinary citizens]

Sometimes DH could swear that she is nothing more than the State's way of making money out of the Commonwealth.

There goes a good bit of Rudd's $900 on this godforsaken downhill stretch at Bellbird Hill. And that must be the goddamn sign DH missed while blithely following the traffic downhill.

Now DH is one of the slowest drivers in NSW. On the Christmas Holidays, she was the one you were banked up behind all the way down the south coast. In 30 years of driving, she has never had a speeding ticket in her life, nor virtually any other infringement. In fact the only thing she has ever been stopped for is by anxious young police officers inquiring if she is ill, given how cautiously she drives. But they say this is a notorious stretch for fleecing motorists. But not only that. DH hasn't owned a car for years, can't afford it, but being the pioneering soul she is, she joined a car-share scheme. Who'dda thought these new fangled cars could be so light. Or that there'd be cameras springing up everywhere???

6 points

But worse was yet to come: this plus another 2 incidents, another minor speeding in the same car, a week earlier, and then wandering into some T-way while lost in the wilds of Kellyville where she'd gone to replenish her failing spirits by roaming around MacMansion Land ... no wonder the poor bloody woman was disoriented ... talk about culture shock ... being in this alien environment both she and her daughter had massive anxiety attacks as they found themselves in a time warp constantly going around the same 3 roundabouts amongst pseudo roman mansions that all looked the same while desperately trying to get back to civilisation ... and now her licence is gonna be suspended for 3 months!

But dammit. She's a good driver who is cautious, doesn't drink, take drugs, or even smoke and has never even had a prang, except maybe occasionally while reversing into a neighbours car, and its all because of the greed of the RTA, a private corporation registered in the USA, would you believe???, so they can mispend our money on idiot schemes like the Dual Carriageway on the Iron Cover Bridge

OH, NEVER MIND! She's copping it sweet, and there goes the bonus, except she's already spent it by doing the right thing by her local hair salon, the phone bill, the mobile bill, the internet bill, the pharmacist, the car share bill, oh, and the neighbour's dented mudguard...

Boo hoo.

Greetings Housos, we have come to train you!

One of the joys of unemployment at DH's age and level of infirmity is that you get to do a lot of fun courses to prepare you for jobs that you are unlikely to get because of age and disability discrimination.

Thus it is that DH found herself shoe-horned into a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment.

The objectives are to:

• round up a bunch of people with some native talent for teaching
• teach them to gibber in incomprehensible bureaucratese
• discipline them into course-delivery robots
• turn them loose to replicate

And it takes 8 agonising days!

Why can't they learn from Dr Who. One blast of the electron gun, and your brain is rehoused in a shiny new cyberman outfit.

Tramp tramp tramp. Target Learning Objective. Obliterate independent thought. Deliver Learning Outcome. Tramp tramp tramp. Evaluate Performance Criteria. Obliterate obliterate obliterate. Objective accomplished.

4F: Family First F*wit Fielding

Any chance of electors getting our cash back on this joker?


DH is increasingly horrified by a democracy that allows idiots to flourish.

When DH was a girl, idiots seemed to knew their place and kept their mouths shut. Talk about a sense of entitlement! Now they even feel they can stand up against the will of the Australian people, and position themselves as the most powerful player in Aussie politics!

And nothing is more idiotic than an idiot who believes himself to be on a mission from God.

Who voted for this idiot anyway?

Oh yeah... apparently, he got in on some preference deal that Labor set up to keep the Greens out of the Senate.

... On second thoughts, there can obviously be such a thing as too much cleverness.

Oh alright, so idiots have always flourished... but never with such a sense of entitlement.

Renovate this!

Thanks to the Labor government for the $130 million to maintain our homes and prop up our economy. And lest we forget, thanks for reversing the 12 years of housing neglect by the Howard Government.

Meanwhile in public housing in NSW there has been no money for years for anything but emergency maintenance, and stock has run down.

Here's an example just from DH's place, which is only about 25 years old.



The list includes: a subsiding bathroom floor, dry rot in the windows and door frames, poor quality carpet fraying everywhere, perished kitchen flooring, subsiding kitchen cabinets, no insulation under a hot tin roof windows that won't open, water damaged architraves.

To be honest, DH is so grateful to have a place at all that she is not much bothered. As Capitalism slides down the gurgler, being houseproud hardly seems like a priority.

How "Labor" treats the unemployed

How many people are on Newstart because they are denied the Disability Pension?

The bizarre rule for being accepted on the Disability pension is that your condition must be long term and stable.

Centrelink forces those whose condition is long term and unstable (eg not responding to medication) to stay on Newstart.

When such people apply for a Disability Support Pension, they are forced to remain on Newstart, with reduced job search requirements.

In other words, their inability to get work is tacitly recognised.

So what's the difference?

Oh, about $100 a fortnight per person in the government's coffer, extracted from the hide of some of the Australia's weakest and most unwanted..

The unemployed are the most stereotyped, stigmatised and reviled group in Australia.

Yet how many of them are actually

• chronically sick
• moderately disabled
• low-level mentally ill
• near pension age and unemployable due to age discrimination

And to add injury to insult, all these people, who are trying to get by on $225.15, a week were denied the $900 stimulus package that might have seen them catch up on a few bills at last.

And to add the 'Labor' government's irrationality to injury, these are the people who would have turned over the money most quickly! While those whose fancy lawyers and tax minimisation schemes reduce their income to $100,000 will not only receive the money, but can squirrel it away to do the economy no good at all!

All because the unemployed are the nation's scapegoats, and governments can get away with it.

Ham Hocks' geniality disguises vacuity

How disappointing that the SMH's normally endearingly acrid Annabel Crabb has turned to sickening mush over Joe Hockey's "genial" personality.

Ham Hock's performance on Q&A last week left DH foaming at the mouth. She found him neither cute nor lovable nor funny. What she saw was an overconfident buffoon hogging the limelight, while having absolutely nothing of substance to say.

We're talking about the greatest crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression. If you're going to have the gall to drown out the other panellists it's not enough to be a likeable joe. It helps to have something constructive to say.

What is it about the Joes anyway? Hockey and Tripodi - two of a kind, the class attention seekers who play up in the front row. But all their capering and clowning can't hide the fact that they haven't done their homework.

If HamHocks keeps carrying on like this, he may become DH's new poster boy for the Banality of Evil.

CEC not welcome here

You know who you are. Do not spam this website.

 

And if you don't know who they are, watch out. They are a bunch of far right conspiracy theory losers who are gleefully trying to make hay out of the global capitalist meltdown. Some of what they say is plausible. Even if its only the obvious notion that bubbles eventually burst. Other than that, look out for their weird ideas.

So you think you can dance your way out of hypercapitalist bust?

Or "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Reality TV is schooling young Australians to be the docile slaves of the new world economy. Note how alienated machine rhythms make up the most popular music. How sad to see our magnificently talented, beautiful and naive young people outbidding each other to imitate robots. Well, they'll need to be to compete internationally with 3rd world people who had any sense of their own rights and dignity beaten out of them long ago.

Role Model?

For years now, our young people have been in training. The name of the game is to swallow any humiliation your overseers can dish out. That way you can stay in the game and have a chance at the scarce prizes controlled by the pimps and whores of the corporations with the money.

And then you will be exploited and discarded.

DH was nearly sick with disgust when she watched an episode of "So you think you can dance".

Thank god her leaning disabled child who wouldn't harm a flea said she wouldn't watch another episode because she can't bear to watch people being hurt.

It makes you wonder who has a "disorder". All the cheering young things who have some saleable gifts which they can't wait to offer up for exploitation, or the learning disabled who will never get applauded, or rewarded for having nothing to give but love. And who will be forced btw to get by on a miserable pittance of about $500 a fortnight, when their support needs are so much more expensive than those of the able-bodied who can make their own way.

These shows are turning our young people into servile morons.

What a shame thatour censors focus on excising loving sex from prime television, but happily ignore shows like this, which are nothing but sado-masochism, both in attitude and content.

When these young people are not imitating machines, they are tarting themselves up to look like hyper-sexualised whores and pimps. I guess the judges like that because every criminal loves to hide the blackness of their own hearts by corrupting others.

The Biggest Loser

Now this is pure porn and takes our minds off the truly fat and ugly, those who consume most of the world's wealth, and can afford anorexic young women to make them look good.

Sickening!

DH's Housing Recovery Plan: Musical Houses

What hope is there for conventional responses to the rising tide of homelessness when according to the NY Times even the massive $275 billion thrown at the problem by Obama's recovery plan  will not come close to halting the tidal wave of foreclosures. Nor would it provide much help to millions of homeowners who are "under water," or holding mortgages that are bigger that the market value of their houses

 

So here's DH's stab at a simple solution: Musical Houses

 

After sufficient advance notice, at exactly midnight, the national broadcaster simply plays Advance Australia Fair. When the music stops... you aquire the title deeds to whatever residence your bum happens to be parked on. (Only one bum per household allowed!)

 

It's true that some worthy people might miss out. Well they shouldn't have been out on the tiles on Musical Houses night, should they?. But isn't it gratifying to know this simple measure simply wipes out private property and landlords at a stroke?

 

As for those who miss out because they're homeless and don't have a foot in any doors so what else is new? Besides they can be relocated in batches to liven up all those empty and forlorn holiday MacMansions currently blighting all our national beauty spots. .

 

In other parlance, you might call DH's scheme Nationalising Private Property, but Musical Houses sounds so much more fun.

 

Besides all decent, upstanding Australians have been schooled since our 3rd Birthday Party to cop it sweet when the music stops, and not throw a tanty.  If only the same could be said of the property-owning few, who scream blue murder and threaten to transfer their assets to the Bahamas everytime anyone tries to take their negative geary thingee off them.  

Is Hockey the best they can do???

Sadly, DH got it wrong in her entry Hockey's Last Stand: A Buffoon Capers to Oblivion

Read also DH's brief encounter with Joe at Howard govt housing inaction still coming home to roost

Not a lot of talent in the Libs is there?

Underpaid Housing staff comment

[DH thought this comment on her post about underpaid housing staff was worth lifting out of obscurity].

 

Yes, I would think $23 p.h. is definitely below par for someone with SW experience - though it's a bit hard to tell unless you're familiar with all the relevant Classes & Years, as per the Award rates for the Community sector which are accessible on the net, at least for Victoria. I get $25.58p.h. for my casual work in the welfare sector.

In Victoria Office of Housing staff are known to be paid at the lowest rate on the State Public Service Award. Yet their caseloads are just as described in the ad you've reprinted from NSW. When I talked to the CPSU official responsible for public housing staff a couple of years ago he said that their workloads were basically unmanageable and that he was worried about the psycho-emotional health of some of his OH staff.

This week an OH worker told me that all the rent rebate reviews which were due to be processed by Nov 23, '08 were still underway (the new rebate system has everyone's rent fixed for an identical 6 month period, so they all have the same processing date).

But ultimately pay and conditions should be lobbied on by the CPSU. Could it be that the union's ties to Labor are impeding their capacity to be a robust union? I wonder how these examples from NSW & Vic compare to other states?

There's no doubt that public tenants would benefit from having better paid & qualified staff.

D'oH recruitment drive stalls 5 months on

While D'oH is appealing for temp CSO contractors for the minimalist remuneration of $23 an hour, what happened to the recruitment drive launched last October for new CSO's? Eager applicants who may have devoted a day or two of their lives filling in the typical government applications with its long lists of selection criteria are still waiting to hear yay or nay 5 months on.

 

 

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

Any takers for this lucrative career opportunity with D'oH?

Any "social workers" prepared to work for $23 an hour?

What does "strong minded" mean exactly?

Does that $23 include a "strong-mindedness" bonus to explain the largesse

Don't forget that $23 doesn't include sick pay or holiday pay

DH's learning disabled child's first menial job pays $23 an hour...

With this kind of offer, no wonder all the you beaut things dreamed up in head office never get implemented down at the branch offices.

Dept of Housing - Client Services Officer - Northern Shores

Department of Housing requires customer service rep for their office in the Northern Shores $23

Our client requires a strong minded and experienced customer service representative preferably with a background in social work or community care to assist with managing a portfolio of clients. Your role will be to manage your portfolio of clients while under the guide and with support from your team leader to ensure you provide high level customer service while juggling a large workload of differing priorities.

You will work in small, friendly and supportive team and where your days will be varied with tasks such as Counter Service, Office Administration and Client Visits. While the role is a temporary position there is a lot of potential to possibly advance your career within the department.

Located close to Buses. Paying $23 P/H your duties will include but won't be limited to:

• Managing a portfolio of clients and looking after their special needs
• Counter customer service
• Client visits
• General Administration

Must have:

Publish Post

• Previous experience in a customer service background
• Social Work or Case Work desirable
• Excellent open and friendly communication skills both verbal and written
• Proven conflict resolution skills
• Ability to understand and interpret policy
• A current driver's license a must
• Ability to work well under pressure as well as in a team environment
• Understanding of confidentiality and a strong work ethic

No additional funding to house bushfire victims

Kevin Rudd has just announced on Question Time that  "the Victorian Govt can draw on the $6.4 billlion social housing fund", or $1.x billion of it to house those left homeless. Let's hope that most of those who lost their homes were insured, otherwise what about the people that have been on the wait lists for years? Will they be displaced by those who are the "more deserving" new poor?

Bubbles' r 'us, or, the Banality of Greed (from the Brown Couch)

For those of you who prefer facts and figures to opinion, check out Debt and blame from the Tenants Union's new blog, The Brown Couch.  In it "Chris" illustrates with graphs and all just exactly how "with his Capital Gains Tax reforms, Peter Costello behaved like a tout at the door to the casino", while greedy mums and dads gambled our prosperity away.

 

It confirms DH's point of view about the detested Howard Government. Sure she despised Howard and Co. But who voted for him? Who demanded continual pandering? The coalition of the small-time Greedy and the Resentful, and the Comfortably Amoral.

 

The bubble ' r ' us

 

What hope for the human race when we're no smarter than locusts. Like them, we eat everything out till there's nothing left. Then we wonder why there's nothing left...

What's a $Billion here or there?

DH hopes that her old Political Economy lecturer, Prof Frank Stilwell, will straighten her out about the global financial crisis this Friday at Politics in the Pub.

Alas all she recalls of from her days as a student of Economics is the Golden Rule as expounded to all first year PE students at Sydney Uni

The Golden Rule of Economics

Whoever has the gold, makes the rules

Still, she avers, that is all ye need to know, other than its corrollary, never be intimidated by economic jargon.

DH looks forward to meeting followers of the Diary on the night, though she regrets that she will not be wearing a lobster on her head for easy identification.

Tripodi: Jump, jump, jump!

Who is this man, and why does have so much power? And who's his partner in skulduggery, Eddie Obeid?

As Housing Minister, Tripodi introduced the infamous "Reshaping Public Housing", against the advice of all housing NGO's and activists, which seems to be transforming public housing into a statewide free-range psychiatric hospital with no services on site for the inmates.

We can have some sympathy with the view that State governments had no choice but to tighten up eligibility criteria for public housing to those "most in need" when the dastardly Howard government gutted the the C'wealth State Housing agreement to the tune of $3 billion over 10 years. (Or so Labor used to say, though now they seem to be revising that to $1 billion).

But Tripodi had infinite choice on how to promote this policy. He chose the cheap populist route of drumming up hatred and resentment for the people his brief was to protect. His only reported public comment during his tenure as Housing Minister was to vow to stamp out the BMWs threatening to eat public housing (according to him and his acolytes Cherie Burton and Matt Brown)

DH has only once witnessed Tripodi's parliamentary performance. She's been trying to track it down in Hansard with no luck. The gist: In response to a serious question from the opposition on the state of NSW transport, Tripodi was the class clown, all bumptious posturing and schoolboy hooting and hollering. Anyone who has ever taught young bullyboys will immediately recognise the sure sign that they haven't done their homework. And let's not forget the oil-slick of sleaze that surrounds Tripodi wherever he surfaces.

If he won't jump, can't somebody push him?

Rudd and Gillard cream Turnbull and Bishop.

Happened to watch Question time yesterday. Even DH's daughter who hates politics cheered at the way Rudd wiped the floor with a shamefaced looking Opposition. All poor Malcolm could do was to sit there smiling in a desperate attempt to appear confident.

But the cake had to go to the Leader of the Nationals, ... er... what's his name? who tried to dredge some political capital out of appealing to the Resentful Classes about the 80 million going to overseas pensioners. How pitiful. Every nation has reciprocal arrangements for payment of pensions because it's in their own interests, and besides its all about free markets and global flows. . To try and make hay out of something they themselves support shows how low they will go. Or is Mr W's H. Name just that ignorant?

No, DH is not in the Labor party, and she's incredibly dirty with them for not squarely standing up to the mistreatment of people on Newstart. But still...

Housing design matters

Driving down Bourke St, Alexandria today made DH's heart sing! The sun was shining, and life seemed full of creative possibilities. Why can't social and disability housing design be like that? Why is there so little public discussion about the importance of design in welfare housing? What does it mean to someone society hopes to rehabilitate when they come home to some hideous concrete or redbrick structure that says "This is all you are worth".

OK, so we're living with legacy housing from a more punitive era. DH understands that HNSW is now looking at building housing that is not distinguishable from private housing. May relief come quickly! And may this not be forgotten in the rush to put affordable housing down on the ground as quickly as possible.

If you go down to Centrelink today...

If you go down to the C'link today, you're in for a big surprise.

If you stand at the end of a C'link queue, you'll never believe your eyes

For every bear market victim that ever there was is gathered there for certain because

Today's the day they hand in their forms for dole payments

Unbelievable. Last year there was just a handful of us desperados down there. Now there are lengthening queues, and pity the people waiting 20 deep for interviews. And there's lots of well-to-do looking young people. DH hopes they are all former Liberal bankers getting a free education in neo-classical economics

What message is Labor sending the unemployed?

If you went down to Centrelink two weeks ago, you would have seen the sorry people in the unemployed queues. How anecdotal of DH, but there were few tanned sybarites amongst their number dressed in borrowed rags just to claim their 250 bucks. The clientele is mostly Aborigines, people with ravaged faces or bodies, bad teeth, and for respectability, a smattering of people close to retirement age, who are finding it hard to get work.

The unemployed have the lowest rates of benefit, and even that little they have, they will pay tax on.

What is Labor's message here?

1. Hang in there, we'll give you an extra $30 a week someday
2. You should be trying harder to find work, and it's your own fault
3. We're running as scared of the resentful lower middle class as the Liberals were
4. We're practising triage here, we'll have to let the weakest go the wall. You're the group that will do us the least electoral damage

Bouquets to Rudd Government

Thanks to Tanya Plibersek and co, for the 6.6 billion to build 20,000 new dwellings. A stimulus to the economy that won't send silvertails whingeing to the media that money spent on the great unwashed will end up as a stimulus to the Chinese economy.

+ Architectural crimes against humanity

+ the UN really should look into setting up a commission for the prosecution of Architectural Crimes Against Humanity.

+ was there ever a more smug profession than architecture?

+ when architects' creations are grand and remotely useful, they pile each other with awards and self-congratulations in the most ridiculously expansive terms

+ when architects build duds that blight the landscape and their inhabitant's lives for generations, they appear to get off scot-free

What happens when there is all reward and no punishment for architects? It seem unnatural and counter-evolutionary (sic) not to build in some kind of disincentive for self-aggrandising experimentation at the expense of society.

Check out these gems, gleaned at random from just 5 minutes research in an architectual mag. With fruity stuff like this, who needs satirists?

• a beautifully resolved steel stair leads up to the supremely private master bedroom
• the architect cleverly proposed that ...
• the home offers a rich sequence of sightlines that sympathetically but assertively marries old and new
• the clients are an architects's dream - educated and socially conscious, with a refined aestheticism that is evidenced by their collection of Scandinavian-inspired furniture. They have resisted the urge to add bedrooms, a media room, and a huge deck...
• Tom decided to push back against the hostile context with what he calls an industro-residential architectural vocabulary (DH swears this is for real, and not a Larsen cartoon)

DH, too, has decided to push back against the hostile context of a roof with no insulation in a glasshouse facing west, with the clever solution of something she would like to call a plastic spray bottle of water intermittently directed at the portable fan. Yet she chooses to marry old and new by retaining that ever-servicable houso-tenantial vocabulary of "f...ing w...ers".

+ 08 National Architecture Awards

Thinking to give the architectural profession an opportunity to redeem itself, DH checked out the 2008 Australian Architecture Awards for Public Architecture. They went to 2 of our ritziest private schools, no doubt paid for by funds dragged out, along with the toenails, of public education by Howard et al whose legacy looks more and more repulsive by the minute. Here's some more prose...

• The Centre for Learning and Leadership ... creates an enduring positive impact on the design of the public domain and on those who use and visit its facilities ... achieving an even greater public presence that conveys, through architecture, a commitment to the highest standards of education and the development of the individual in society
  
• The architecture ... conveys a “no-nonsense” message – a bold and purposeful architecture that is heartening to contemplate when considering the education of young women.

Bold and purposeful alright, though DH prefers the terms "brazen" and "relentless" when considering the upper classes' capacity to cream off the fat of the land for themselves and congratulate themselves for it to boot. Pity the ordinary school kid who doesn't get to "use and visit" such wonders.

Let's be fair. No-one wants to put chains on anyone's dreams, and DH dreams of winning the lottery and having a dream home too. She has to admit that she is utterly ignorant of egalitarian movements in architecture as no doubt there are such, and looks forward to educating herself further in the future.

Meanwhile, there's "Architects Sans Frontieres" and "Emergency Architects".

Spilling some beans on NSW govt's inability to pay bills on time

The time has come for a confession.

DH has a fair idea why the NSW government cannot pay its bills, and she is partly to blame.

The short answer in her experience is SAP, short-staffing, and short-term funding. But first:

A short excursion along DH's career path.

DH is a somewhat incompetent geek, with limited capacity for multi-tasking, an obsessive and time- consuming attention to minor detail, a treacherous short-term memory which condemns her to spending 1/2 her waking hours searching for that piece of paper she just had in her hand, and 1/2 of the rest cursing her inability to find a ringing mobile in the 3 compartments of her handbag.

In a capitalist world dedicated to speed and efficiency DH is a job tragic.

DH sometimes thinks she is the Typhoid Mary of teetering NGO's and hopeless government departments. When they are reduced to employing the likes of her, it's a sure sign that they are on the brink of brutal restructuring or death.

If DH was an employer she would never hire herself, but of course she can't tell them that otherwise Centrelink would breech her. So she keeps amassing a more and more impressive and lengthy CV as she reels from job to job that she is not really suited to

With the Howard government dedicated to a punitive proddy work ethic, a hatred of perceived shirking, a total failure to respect human diversity, and a commitment to brutally stuffing square pegs willy-nilly into round holes, DH must needs be made to play her small part in the downfall of capitalism.

Here

Thus it was that she found herself as assistant to the project manager of a major governmental capital works project. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

Well, it wasn't all bad. Being an aspie geek, she's a bit of computer whizz. So a lot of her time was spent being nursemaid to a fiendishly complex, 5 page (A3 page yet!) wide spreadsheet.

Yes folks, some of our major government departments, who promote themselves as state-of-the art project managers, had not yet heard of the technical innovation know as the Database! (In fairness, this was way back in the technological dark ages of 2007, so perhaps we should be a little bit forgiving)

When DH apprised her bosses of the possibilities of technology, they finally twigged that it might be good to invest in an upgrade. But it seems that with government funding to its own internal consultants being only approved from year to year, they did not dare to spend money to save money on infrastructure in case the whole project was torpedoed in the next financial year.

But that is a diversion from the bill payment question.

Part of DH's job was processing payments to contractors, poor souls, regional mum-and-dad partnerships, who sometimes had to wait for months to see the money, and yes, it was her fault alone.

Her department meanwhile was staggering under the imposition of a new (fiendishly complex again) SAP system that couldn't cope with the specifics of their particular kind of work. Her poor boss, while running multi-gazillion dollar projects was literally reduced to spending at least one precious day a month just hunting down the codes necessary to fill in his timesheet!

Her predecessor had been sacked for failing to cope with the complexities of The-Spreadsheet-That-Wanted-to-be-a-Database, under some approbrium, totally undeserved, as of course, training is an ideal rarely achieved in any workplace that DH has been associated with. And with every department running on a shoestring budget with minimum staff levels, there was no redundancy in the system so when someone left, Grade 11-12 public servants would find a good part of their day relegated to training up Grade 4-5's to process Accounts Payable. It took a good 6 weeks for DH to learn the ropes, and attend to the numerous crises that affect stretched workplaces. Meanwhile the creditors floundered.

And that's about it. In between days spent trying to force-feed SAP with codes it couldn't swallow, ministering to spreadsheets, soothing desperate project managers going spare about wasted time, and DH's desperately absent-minded paper-shufflings, poor old contractors slid to the bottom of the priority list.

It's a miracle anything got built at all really.

That it did was a massive testament to DH's fellow workers, who despite being hampered at every turn, gave 200%, and of course, extra hours without pay, to get it all done miraculously more or less on schedule.

DH demands national conversation on Vegemite

This site is a Vegemite free zone!

For too long, Australians of refined sensibility have been oppressed by the Vegemite-guzzling majority.

How much longer must we endure their smear campaigns?

We demand that the "Vegemite Question" be put on the agenda for a genuinely inclusive Australia Day.

Dodson's national conversation kickstarted by his opponents :-)

It's amusing to find that while vociferously rejecting Patrick Dodson's call for a national conversation on Australia Day, all the usual rightwing rabble rousers, Albrechtson, Akerman, and Henderson were off like hares this morning, first off the mark to kickstart the conversation they don't think we should have :-)

Much as DH admires Rudd, she thinks his "no" was premature, priggish and excessively fearful of backlash, though an understandable attempt to hose down a public overwhelmed by change. Unfortunately there's no supressing an idea whose time has come once it's "out there".

Debates about whether or not the Aborigines had a utopia before 1788 are irrelevant. The 26th of January simply opened up a new nightmare for the indigenous inhabitants of this country. Even from a no-armband, utterly blamefree point of view, smallpox alone brought suffering to the land.

Unfortunately when we face a crisis, like 9/11, or the current financial meltdown, we return to more caveman-like impulses, and the finer impulses to social progress are stalled. But eventually the day will shift as it must.

Howard govt housing inaction still coming home to roost

So Australia is home to three of the most "severely unaffordable housing markets" studied by Demographia, an international policy group, and all of it happened under the imperial aegis* of those self-styled paragons of solid, responsible economic management, Howard, Costello, What's-his-name, and not forgetting the egregious young Hockey Minor.

Though DH is a timorous creature, she likes to think she cornered Hockey at her local "politics at the pub" approximately thus: "As one of the traditional renters of Sydney who are now doing it tough thanks to your govt's 10 years of neglect and failure to address housing policy, can you explain how this happened under your watch, when you had 10 years to anticipate it , and do you think you owe us an apology?". DH could swear he looked like a guilty rabbit caught in the headlights for a second, before he recalled himself and returned with the Liberal mantra: ... it's all the fault of the States, ... failing to release more land ... state taxes ...

"Clueless and lazy" sums it up.

And they're touting this otherwise amiable bozo as the future Liberal saviour of the NSW!

See also Hockey's Last Stand: A Buffoon Capers to Oblivion

*aegis (n), the shield of Zeus, bearing at its centre the head of the Gorgon, she whose gaze turns men to stone... Which is a very unkind thing to say about Amanda Vanstone

Go Nathan!

For the sake of stability, DH desperately wants Nathan Rees to get it together, despite yesterday's prevarications.

She reckons he just needs to call on his inner Obama, keep in touch with his ideals, find his own voice and articulate a truthful and realistic message, and the public will respect him for it.

DH admires him for the way he appears to have started following this path from the beginning, and perhaps Obama's example can continue to inspire him and fuel his determination.

His "sack me or back me" call (as described by the Telegraph) seems spot on, and today he appears to have prevailed, at least as far as us ordinary punters can hope to know.

DH is willing to bet that most of NSW want him to succeed and be the best he can be for all our sakes.

Dubbo: When the natives get restless

How heartbreaking to see the ABC doco When the natives get restless about the impact of the Housing Minister, Cherie Burton's 2006 decision to raze Dubbo's Gordon Estate.

Excerpts from Hansard 11 May 2006, the day of the announcement:

Miss CHERIE BURTON: ... The cost of maintaining properties on the estate is 300 per cent higher than the cost of maintenance on any other estate in western New South Wales. Since 1995, 46 properties on the estate have been destroyed by fire.... all 278 Department of Housing properties to be sold.... the community will be consulted every step of the way...

Mr Andrew Stoner [Nats]: ... [The Minister has not answered] where these tenants are going. Where is she sending the tenants?

Miss CHERIE BURTON: ... [Tenants] will be found appropriate housing in an area appropriate to their needs and the needs of the community ....

Mr Andrew Stoner: You just send them somewhere else...

The doco now shows us the exactly where the "appropriate accommodation" turned out to be, in the case of one woman with 7 children, whose 4 bedroom place was replaced by a caravan in Wagga. The children were torn away from their grandparents who remained in Dubbo. So much for building stronger communities.

The grandfather soon died in Dubbo. There was a chilling scene where the children were entertained by a new "uncle" in the caravan park, a lugubrious, blood-curdling maniac who would have defied belief even as a cartoon character.

Was this a family of "troublemakers" who deserved their fate? There was no trial, and we will probably never know. But all the children looked under 13.

Well, that was Cherie Burton's watch. Now let's see how new Minister, David Borger manages with Rosemeadow (below) ...

Rosemeadow: When the natives get restless ...

While Cherie Burton took a scorched earth, take-no-prisoners approach to social problems at Dubbo, David Borger appears to be attempting surgical removal of the offending families.

But first, the evictions have to be approved by "The Tribunal", the CTTT. Since October 2008, the CTTT has a new social housing division to deal with the huge volume of work sent its way by Housing NSW.

It will be interesting to see the Tribunal's verdict.

DH wonders whether

• the same legal processes were followed for the indigenous inhabitants of Dubbo
• the CTTT's social housing division is independant of both the Minister and HNSW

Watch this space, as she is awaiting advice from a legal eagle.

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

Update 31 Jan 09

The legal eagle reminded DH that Dubbo was abt transfers, while Rosemeadow is abt evictions. DH still wonders what pressure was applied, and what legal recourse tenants might have had if they didn't want to move. Keep watching....

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

DH has long contended that the CTTT was used, at huge cost to taxpayers, to intimidate tenants over trivial arrears, seemingly at the discretion of individual staff, giving huge scope to bloody-minded individuals to bully tenants.

For the saga of DH's own drama with the Tribunal Merry-go-round which nearly cost her her job and her sanity, check out this blog in the months of Jan to March 2006

1. DH gets Termination of Tenancy notice!
2. Just plain desperate... (the emotional cost of the process)
3. The outcome

DH has mixed feelings about evictions. Were she her former carefree and idealistic self, her response would have been that everyone must be housed, and adequate supports must furnished by the state. But having seen estates terrorised by a few tenants who are a danger to themselves and others, she wonders just how far the art of the possible extends.

She might once have agreed with Ben Franklin's (paraphrased) dictum that those who sacrifice civil liberties for the sake of perfect security, deserve neither. Yet to sacrifice the security of the reasonably responsible majority for the sake of the civil liberties of those who are simply not capable of exercising any responsibility, seems to defy basic comon sense rooted in the biological and evolutionary laws which must have some sway over all living things, with the possible exception of sociology professors...

A Dastyardly move by NSW ALP Head Office

Thanks to 2 articles in the SMH, DH is having second thoughts about her exhortation to NSW Labor, below, to "stand by their man".

Call her fickle, but bamboozled is more like it

What can anyone without inside knowledge, really know about the ambitions, personality clashes, secret interests, toxic alliances and pressures to toe the line, that appear to make up the sum total of NSW Labor? When it comes to NSW politics, truly what-t-f does DH think she knows? She should probably stick to her brief, which is to whinge about the Department of Housing and Centrelink. But these days, with all renters doing it tough, it seems churlish to complain. And with the old class struggle intensifying as laissez-faire Cap melts down, DH has no intention of becoming a wedge to divide the underclasses. So with her chances of getting a job receding rapidly into the never-never, she has time on her hands to meddle in things she has no idea about.

First, DH is mightily disturbed by Andrew Clennell's Taxpayers fund ALP man's move into Rees office about Sam Dastyari's dizzying climb to a 6 figure salary. How does a 25 year old become a "senior official" from ALP headquarters? Since when is a wet-behind-the-ears eager beaver a "man"?

And despite the Devine Miss M's general dodginess, when she opines that, Frankly, the best option is Sartor, perhaps she has a point. Perhaps DH is wrong to support Nathan Rees based only on conventional wisdom rather than inside knowledge: "Let's draw a line in the sand, stop chopping and changing, work with what we've got, and get on with it". And DH is feeling sheepish about her prejudiced remarks about an ethnic mafia. It turns out Sartor, Costa and Tripodi can't stand each other. Not that a mafia mindset precludes factions, but, mea culpa.

Now DH was, until late last year, a member of the Labor party. Yet still she has no idea what's going on in the party. She spent her time in the party dutifully sending motions on deadly boring, but no doubt vital, topics like cement loaders and rogue fig trees to some elephant graveyard in the sky, never to be heard of again.

Every now and then, there were rumours of a mysterious entity called "head office", which apparently was redolent with faceless (does anyone have any idea of what Karl Bitar even looked like before he was whisked off to higher things?) ambitious wogs with no devotion to the idealistic passions of her mainly Anglo/Celtic playmates in the Inner West Labor Left playpen.

Now this young Dastyari fellow, who according to the SMH has been foisted on Nathan Rees by Head Office: again, wtf does DH know, but Dastyari was convincingly described to her in the most contemptuous terms by one idealistic young world-changer who was too disgusted to stick it out in Young Labor,

And how do 25 year olds, whose only qualification is to turn up tenaciously at meetings that no self-respecting young activist would touch with a barge-pole, get to become power brokers in what is after all, our major political party?

So anyway, for all DH knows, Frank Sartor may be as good a caretaker as NSW gets till the Messiah comes.

We have a dream again!

What a magnificent speech from Barack Obama!

DH pledges to refrain for a day from all cynicism and lampoonery while she dares to dream of a world in which satirists are unnecessary

Christmas Island the New Jerusalem

DH is not usually given to doling out advice on foreign policy, but since her inbox is overflowing with invective from the Leftist Republic of CloudCuckooLand and their benighted Messianic opponents, she feels she is rapidly become as expert as the next punter. Having weighed up the polemic from both extremes,  the idea of the Middle Path so appeals to her that this may be her last missive before converting to Buddhism.

 

As a suitably detached neo-Buddhist Sage-in-Waiting and Equal of Heaven, then, here's her take on the Middle East conflict.  

 

Posing as mild-mannered welfare-workers come to straighten out the corrupt Palestinian Authority, Hamas' mustachios-with-fists got themselves elected by the desperate Gazan mainstream. While carrying on their welfare shopfront as a smokescreen, they prosecuted their real agenda. Holy War against the Infidel in their midst. 

 

What have they got to lose by taking 1000's of potshots at Southern Israel? Either the Israeli people living there give up, or else the testosterone crowd that tends to run governments and military, eventually succumb to doing what comes naturally and go ballistic.

 

DH wonders what Hamas cares if their people die? They believe in a glorious afterlife after all They've turned the whole state of Gaza into a suicide bomb. And they've got their allies in the Republic of CuckooLand backing them up in the propaganda war.

 

Poor Palestinians. Poor Israelis.

 

DH suggests a prisoner exchange. Lets round up all the fundamentalists, Jewish, Christian, Moslems, Socialist Alliance, and anyone else caught wearing silly hats. Then let's exchange them for all the normal co-operative flexible people stuck in the middle east who just want to get on with their lives.

 

Christmas Island. With all its facilities ready to go,  wouldn't that be a magnanimous and aptly named gift to the flotsam of Zion. Anyone for the New Jerusalem?

 

 

 

NSW Labor. Stand by your man

DH reckons NSW Labor should quit their shenanigans, pull themselves together and get behind Nathan Rees come hail or shine. He shows every indication of intelligence and character, and if he lacks experience, those who think they're smarter should get over their personal ambitions and for the sake of the state, build him up and guide him.

Enough bull from creeps like Obeid and Tripodi!

Maybe those in the know have reasons for supporting Frank Sartor and the ethnic Labor mafia. No doubt like all strong men Frank is a mixed bag of good and bad. But DH knows, or thinks she knows, one thing about him. During his tenure as Mayor, while she was working in the City of Sydney Library she and her fellow-workers had the lowest wages of any library staff in Sydney. Needless to say, she does not see penny-pinching as equivalent to masterful economic management.

On the 15th day of Christmas...

And they wonder why DH gets desperate at this time of year! The list below is for real! It's exactly what DH's dear old mum gave her, although the numbers are somewhat under-stated.

With genes like this running through the family, what lifechances did DH ever have?

On the 15th day of Christmas, her mother gave to her

15 Anxious phone calls
14 Full of griping
13 Crochet doilies
12 Knit clothes hangers
11 Shirley Temple photos
10 Andre Rieu CDs
9 Old "Women's Weeklies"
8 Gold lamé jackets
7 Leftover sandwiches in
6 Layers of gift wrap
5 Oven Mitts!
14 Christmas cards
13 Channukah cards
12 Old underpants
. . . and a monologue on family history

Thank Kevin's Angels for the bonus

Despite the rational argument that the money would have been better spent on more housing, DH is deeply grateful for the $1400 that her daughter received as a Disability Pensioner.

 

It means that the two of us can afford to have a holiday for the first time in years. We plan to hire a car, and head down to the South Coast.

 

Can't wait to do our patriotic duty to bail out the nation's tourism industry!  So before we tootle off,

 

 

We wish you all a d&m 2009, dear readers!  

 

 

PS. Can't resist one final carp, before we hit the road.

Unfortunately, with the cost of car hire, petrol, and accommodation, their won't be enough left over to indulge any secret inclination DH's daughter may have for booze or gambling, so Tony Abbott should not worry too much. Do he and his cronies have any idea how people actually live??

 

 

 

Erratum: Councillor not Mayor

Due to a lapse in concentration DH mistakenly described a councillor allegedly stacking a public housing tenants association as a Mayor. Apologies for misleading impressions.

Rudd Bonus reignites Class Struggle: Grumpy Old Policy Wonks vs Grinning Housos Clutching New Plasma TVs

Yes! DH has one at last, thanks to the Rudd bonus. Actually, she bought it out of her tax refund earlier this year. But only because she was worried she might not get another job by Christmas. So she figured if the worst happened, the bonus would still allow her to participate in the Nation's most sacred religious rite, the annual re-enactment of the "Resurrection of the Retailers".

(For more innocent days, refer to Quick, hide the plasma TV! Vinnies pays a visit).

All this is by way of thumbing her nose at the Scrooges who begrudge the masses their little bit of Xmas Cheer. It makes you long for the good old days of feudalism really, doesn't it? Back in ye Goode Olde Dark Ages, you only had to vouchsafe your liege 10% of your turnip harvest as rent, you hardly worked except at sowing and reaping time, and at the end of the year, you got invited to the manor to be treated to the latest in communications technology (OK, so it was wandering minstrels wassailing on the back of a tumbril.)

Now we're hearing from the fiscally-responsible classes, if they can tear themselves away from Grumpy Old Policy Wonks on the super dooper widescreens that they've had since they first hit the market, now we're hearing that housos shouldn't have got their $1000 quid, because they'll only spend it on Asian Electronics Multinationals. That's if they're the politically correct left wing middle-classes. Otherwise, they reckon we're all gonna spend it on booze and gambling. Talk about projection at its most obvious! Not screen projection, dummkopfs! Psychological projection, as in Jung and Freud, as in projecting your own secret desires, onto the Other, who can then be disposed of without too much grief.

NO! That bonus should have been spent on worthier recipients! It shoudda been spent on foreign-owned management consultancies like Price Waterhouse, to generate highly responsible feasibility studies, evaluations, reports, assessments, strategic plans, and generally hide the paper trail of blame, should things go pear-shaped.

And another thing, (not to carp on and on about it), but how many times must DH remind you all, (Wake up and smell the bad breath. Something rotten in the state of Howard's Australia) that the budget surplus was extracted from our teeth in the first place.

The ABC's News, in one of its most shameful episodes, trumpeted Tony Abbott's "concern" that beneficiaries would spend it all on booze and gambling. DH was not aware that people with disabilities and pensioners were such a rambustious bunch! Somebody should tweak Abbott's nose for him, and send him into orbit.

Alas, they're all wrong. That 1000 quid is more likely to go on new dentures.

Councillor stacking tenants action group?

[Apologies. DH accidentally wrote "Mayor", when she meant only "Councillor".]

DH hears that a prominent Westie Labor councillor has managed to fill up a local public housing tenants action group with his adoring proteges, and taken over the executive, while the people who reckon they actually did the work have given up in disgust. Reportedly, neither their auspicing agency, not DoH are interested. How did Councillor X do it, and whyever? Based on Anthrop 101, DH can only guess that Arab politics runs on a patronage system, stoked by handing out favours to the faithful and loyal, as opposed to an elected meritocracy. Not that an elected meritocracy inevitably delivers merit that often either, but at least there is something inherently more progressive in the idea than voting for the most powerful sheik in the area. If you believe in progress, that is. And if you don't believe in divine intervention, you gotta believe in progress after all.

2008 | The Housing Year that was | For policy wonks and acronym aficionados

[And if you're not into policy, bureaucratese, and acronyms, go straight to 2008 The Housing Year that was Down Among the Housos. This excursion into tedium is just to disprove those who claim DH is "all sparkling wit and style, and no substance"].

2008 was the year the new Labor Government began to fulfil its election promise to redress the Howard Liberal government’s shameful neglect of housing over its 11 years in office. Howard and Co left housing to “Market Forces”. We all know about that now, don’t we? During its tenure, the Liberals ripped $3 billion out of social housing and transferred it, via the Commonwealth Rental Assistance Scheme, to the pockets of private landlords. Despite fundamental agreement between a raft of government, industry, and NGO housing experts at the 2008 National Housing Conference that negative gearing is the greatest cause of housing inequity, no government has so far been game to touch the national sacred cowshed.

Federal

Tanya Plibersek, universally admired for her commitment to social justice, compassion, intelligence and seeming tireless energy, appointed minister for the new portfolio of Housing.

Oct 14 The federal government announced an increase in First Home Owner Grants to $14,000 for established dwellings and $21,000 for newly-built dwellings

Nov 24 The National Rental Affordability Scheme Act 2008 (NRAS) pass. This scheme aims to increase the supply of affordable rental dwellings by up to 50,000 by 2012. Under the Scheme successful applicants will be eligible to receive a National Rental Incentive for each approved dwelling, on the condition that they are rented to eligible low and moderate income households at 20 per cent below market rates. Second round applications close 27 March 2009

Nov 29 The National Affordable Housing Agreement, (NAHA) replaces the former Commonwealth State Housing Agreement. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG), aka the States, agreed to the … er.. $10 billion agreement, which means they will get $800 million over five years to reform and improve responses to homelessness $1.94 billion over 10 years ($834.6 million over five years) to improve the quality of Indigenous housing and tackle overcrowding in remote communities; and $400 million over two years for social housing as a down payment on longer term reforms.

Dec 21 PM Kevin Rudd and Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek release the White Paper on Homelessness. The government will spend $6.1 billion over 5 years with the aim of halving homelessness (current 105,000 people sleeping out on any given night) by 2020. Amazingly, the NGO's appear to love it.

NSW
Lots happening in Housing NSW, which is bristling with new policies and strategies. Following on from 3 rightwing Housing Ministers whose main public pronouncements took the form of tenant bashing, we now have in David Borger, a Minister who actually has an interest in housing, urban design and renewal. Perhaps we can start taking our BMW's out of our closets..

Housing NSW is looking at a raft of you-beaut strategies around things like Common Access (so applicants don't have to traipse around telling their story to a multitude of agencies), a Disability Action Plan, new hi tech service delivery options, improving Aboriginal Service Delivery, a strategy for supporting young people in public housing. The only question is, how long will it all take???

Apr 15 The Housing Amendment (Tenant Fraud) bill passed, making Housing NSW the only government agency in Australia with criminal prosecution powers.

Sep 8 David Borger, former Mayor of Parramatta, replaces Matt Brown as Housing Minister

Sep 10 Ex- Housing Minister Matt Brown resigns in disgrace after only 3 days in his job as Police Minister

Nov 11 The NSW Mini Budget cuts $80 million from Department of Housing over 4 years, which is to be achieved by “improved operational efficiency”. The government chooses to focus on retaining its AAA rating, and breaks its promise on ongoing contributions to Housing NSW working capital requirements. The NSW Council of Social Security NCOSS response to the Mini Budget says:

The Treasurer in introducing the Mini Budget called it “tough, decisive and
detailed”. He did not call it fair. … there is nothing in the Mini Budget
for low income and disadvantaged households.

Dec 4 the NSW Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social issues announced an inquiry into homelessness and low-cost rental accommodation.

Dec 5 Housing NSW Annual Report released

Dec 11 Housing NSW releases its new strategy on Environmental Sustainability

2008 | The Housing Year that was | Down Among the Housos

It's the same the 'ole world over,
It's the poor wot get the blame
It's the rich wot get the bail-outs...
Ain't it all a bleedin' shame

"Reshaping Public Housing" has started to bite, particularly in the area of ...

Mental health

As public housing becomes increasingly limited to "those most in need" DH has noticed increasing anxiety among tenants about threatening behaviour from people with behavioural and delusional disorders. This perception is borne out by the 2007-8 Central Sydney North Regional Tenant Resource Service Report which states that for the second year in a row, concerns about mental health/ anti-social behaviour/ rebuilding community cohesion have edged out the perennial tenant favourite gripe, Maintenance, inadequacy of. When you consider that tenants all over are reporting that all but emergency maintenance has been on hold for at least 18 months, while we await the new you beaut Planned Maintenance regime (see below), you can surmise how worried tenants must be.

One of the pillars of "Reshaping" was meant to be the "Accord", a formal agreement between various agencies to support tenants with high support needs to maintain their tenancies. Three years later, there have only been a number of pilot projects, and they are still "under evaluation".

Waiting for Maintenance

Housing NSW's maintenance costs are about $1 million dollars a day, based on the previous year's maintenance bill of the order of $350 million. HNSW is attempting to make long term savings by introducing a new regime of planned maintenance. The idea is that contractors armed with Blackberries descend on all of us, survey what needs fixing, beam it all up to a central database, and then it all gets done in one broad swathe. We await the next exciting episode.

Meanwhile, a typical case study...

18 months ago, a tenant reports a cracked and jammed window that won't open. HNSW response: Nail the window down until approval is given for replacement. Many calls later, approval given. Approval now had for months, but nothing done. Now approval reneged, while awaiting the New Maintenance Sweep.

Tenant Fraud ruckus

Under that fine upstanding young minister, Matt Brown, Housing NSW became the first non-police department in Australia to give itself powers of criminal prosecution over tenants who falsely reported their earnings. The amendment to the Housing act that did this was rushed through parliament, before people like Clover Moore and Sylvia Hale had a chance to gather their wits. The Minister guesstimated that the savings would be about $50 million. Tenants were encouraged to dob in their neighbours, which would seem to militate against the millions spent by Housing NSW on Community development and building strong cohesive communities. There were about 4400 reports of which about 1/4 were self-reports according to "Your Home". Does this mean that 3/4 were reports by neighbours? It will be interesting to see the actual savings compared to the cost of eternal vigilance

The Lowdown on TP

Tenant Participation

Housing NSW is working on a new framework to consolidate the patchwork of existing organisations and confused definitions of what TP is all about. The first stage of this process has seen new rules for the ongoing funding of Regional Tenants Resource Services and Public Tenant Councils. HNSW has appointed a new body, the Statewide Social Housing Tenants Advisory Committee (SHTAC), to replace a previous PH Customer Council whose size and general level of internal conflict was considered to be unworkable. While a consultative committee such as the SHTAC has a useful role to play as a channel of communication between tenants and the department, tenant activists are rightly worried at any prospect that it will replace a robust system of tenant representation. In the meantime, HNSW needs to release more information about the actual achievements of this body. Further consultations between HNSW and tenants and other stakeholders are planned for early next year as further elements of the new TP structures are rolled out.

While consultative committees have their place, HNSW should look at schemes introduced by "New" Labor in Britain in which tenants are increasingly members of the boards of management of their estates. An article by Tony Gilmour, a Sydney Uni researcher published in the latest Shelter NSW newsletter, stated that in Manchester, for example, tenants hold fully 1/3 of the directorships of organisations managing over 75,000 units of housing stock.

And in 2009, UK Tenants are looking forward to the formation of the National Tenants Voice, an independent non-profit tenant lobbying group to help shape government policy, with funding of $5 million annually.

What a great idea, but are NSW tenants up to it?

It depends on which should rightly come first, the chicken or the egg:

It depends on whether you believe:

• that if you give tenants a meaningful role that really leads to change, they'll rise to the occasion, or
• that you can't trust tenants to manage themselves until they get their collective act together, until the old warhorses stop sniping at each other, until there is a sizable number of tenants whose horizons extend beyond their own dripping taps, until tenants finally realise that there is no point expecting "the Department" to be its own opposition, and take steps to set up their own tenants union, which probably means until gen-x, y, and z pull their fingers out, come up with some new ideas and dispatch the old guard

Dear Helmsperson eagerly awaits the dictatorship of the tenantariat, and may it come speedily in her lifetime. Amen.

A few articles in the pipeline to complete the 2008 Desperate Houso Omnibus, due to be released before Christmas.

• The Lowdown on TP
  The state of tenant participation in public housing

• Belated welcome to the New Minister
  As Housing Ministers whizz by, DH thought she'd wait a bit before
  expending energy on David Borger, in case he moves on
  
• The Housing Year


• A handy timeline of the big events of '08
  Stung by critiques that she is all style and no substance, DH will be filling you in with all the big events federally and in NSW


• Down among the Housos
  While the policy boffins and acronym afficionados have been busy little beavers, what's actually changed for housos?
  

Vale "D'oH", or, bring back "the Department"

DH cannot stay silent any longer in the face of increasing outrage at being robbed of her prey.

She will never forgive the Department of Housing for rebadging itself as Housing NSW.

It almost smacks of misleading advertising. Housing NSW is a government department, but the slick new corporate"branding" obscures this fundamental reality.

For a start, a huge slice of the population is barely coping with the fact that the Housing Commission was renamed the NSW Dept of Housing way back in 1986. (Isn't Wikipedia wonderful!).

It means that journos now have to clutter their prose with "... Housing NSW (HNSW), formerly known as the NSW Department of Housing ...".

For housos, muttering about "the Department" somehow loses its satisfying Kafkaesque edge. Although the shiny corporate moniker "Housing NSW" could possibly qualify as Orwellian Newspeak.

And for satirists "D'oH" was a gift whose passing is deeply mourned.

Henceforth, DH is putting her foot down. She will not let go of her prey that easily! She shall continue to refer to the "entity formerly known as the Department" as "the Department".

Hi y'all, Tempe Arizona folks!

Just out of curiosity, what brings all you folks from Tempe Arizona to DH's domain? I know times are tough in the US, but if you are hoping to apply for asylum in Australia, I'm afraid we can't find it in our hearts to offer refugees any social security whatsoever. 

 

So sorry you defaulted on your sub-prime mortgage, but it's no use looking for cheap housing here. We're full up.  The waiting list for public housing here in NSW is currently about 40,000 souls, having mysteriously declined from 70,000 last year. Since there was no new housing built over the past year 30,000 have simply vanished. Draw your own conclusions, but personally, DH wouldn't risk it. The Department of Housing is being very cagey about offering any plausible explanation, leaving us to the conclusion that alien body-snatchers have somehow got hold of the Department of Housing's waitlists.  It's a worry.

 

When Barry met Nathan at the Sackville

[Belated entry from an old journalism assignment. There's a nice observation about Rees which DH hopes is worth saving for posterity. ]

"Where else but in Australia", I overheard someone above the din in Balmain's Sackville Pub, "could you get your political leaders turning up to face the rabble without anyone bothering about security?". Had to agree, it's pretty cool that here in Oz, our pollies are this accessible. So there we were in hecklers' paradise as the new Premier of NSW, Nathan Rees, went head to head with the Leader of the Opposition, Barry O'Farrell. And where else but in Oz would the moderator feel sufficiently laid back to refer to the august Leader of the Opposition as "Fatty O'Barrell"? The Coen Brothers couldn't have done better. All that was lacking was some tub-thumping from the Soggy Bottom Boys, Arbib, Bitar, Costa and Iemma, but they'd either been run out of town or kicked upstairs.

This is going to be short on content because you know you could fill in the details in your sleep, so why should I bore you? Be assured that Rees and O'Farrell traded all the requisite economic rhubarb: responsible economic management, accountability, the possession of sound policy in contrast to the other side's lack thereof, and they even shook hands on political donations.

Young Labor and Young Liberals were out in force. The former keeping up a steady catcall: "Where's yer plan, Barry? Show us yer plan! ". A bit dispiriting for those of us in Ageing Labor. Where did we go wrong??? How come our kids are dreaming of Master Planning rather than Barricade Manning (and Womanning of crse). How quickly are the lessons of history forgotten!Why, it seems these young people have never even heard a Socialist 5-year plan joke! See one below: If you believe in Planning... Reassuringly, the Young Libs were still true to tradition, hooting and hollering at nothing in particular, and clueless as ever.

The "Friends of Callan Park" contingent turned up as usual and were promptly ruled out of order by the moderator, Louise Milligan, but not before Rees promised there'd be no selloff of Callan Park to commercial interests. This couldn't have been a huge impost as the Callan Park act precludes it, and Sydney University, who look set to take over, is not a commercial interest.
But what was interesting was trying to divine Nathan Rees' character. Now that we're beyond ideology, character's got to mean a lot. You want someone batting for you who's intelligent, tough, flexible, responsive, can roll with the punches, reliable, up with the detail, and a sense of humor is essential. The times need gravitas: this is no time for clowns or comedians, but the glimmer of dry humor has to be there, proof of quick thinking and guarantee against megalomania. I know we're supposed to be cynical, but I thought Rees fit the bill.

There was one moment that stood out from the predictable argy-bargy. Barry O'Farrell, carried away by the bonhomie of the evening, suggested why not have a series of half-a-dozen of these town-hallers across the state in the lead up to the next election. Instinctively I felt that this is not something Rees would want in a pink fit. But how was he gonna get out of it? I held my breath. How would I have got out of it? Me, a people pleaser, I would have caved, wouldn't want to be seen as lacking in bonhomie. Then I would have gone home and kicked myself and got my staffers to dream up excuses later. But Rees' response was, I thought, forthright and strong, and drew a line in the sand: "No thanks. Barry can run his campaign his way, I'll run mine my way".
Good one!

And another plus for Rees to which one cannot be entirely insensible: he looks like a footballer and has a literature degree: Yess! A sensitive Alpha male at last! What more could a woman (in her capacity as voter of course) want?

But the shock ending was a sign of the times, another sign that the old Balmain was gone. O'Farrell won on the vote. Maybe not on the numbers, but certainly on the volume. The Young Libs are scenting victory and baying loudly for it, while Labor's barrackers lack all conviction.

Maybe the vision of the Glorious Master Planned Dawn just doesn't quite galvanise the masses.

If you believe in Planning...

[For those who put their faith in Master Plans and Strategic Plans as the solution to all our ills ... Take a lesson from history...]

Setting: A factory meeting in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

A lecturer from the district Party committee is telling the workers about their bright future in the USSR.

"See, comrades, after this five-year plan is completed, every family will have a separate apartment. After the next five-year plan is completed, every worker will have a car! And after one more five-year plan is completed, every family will own an airplane!"

From the audience, somebody asks, "What the hell one may need an airplane for?"

"Don't you see comrades? Let's say, there are shortages in potatoes supplies in your city. No problem! You take your own plane, fly to Moscow and buy potatoes!"

Festive Season Wishes

If all our Christmases, Chanukkahs, and Eid Ul Adhas could come at once...

Let's someone pack off all the fundamentalists: Moslem, Christian and Jewish, (and throw in the wearers of silly hats, ~ high correlation with the former), to the Sinai desert, but not before they are stripped of anything invented since the age of miracles. Let them fight it out, and let God pick His favourites by depositing His Manna where He sees fit. We'll go back after 40 years and see who's left standing.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will have got on with it. Ordinary Moslems, Christians, and Jews can get on with good works fortified by whatever fuzzy logic works for them, while we atheists combat our weltschmerz (pain at the pointless suffering of a limited existence) with renewed dedication to social justice. *

And we will be free to start on the Marxists and the Free Marketeers, we'll send them off equipped with nothing but pure theory and the collected works of Milton Friedman, and let the dialectic sort 'em out. And that'll be the end of the creme de la patriarchy and all their benighted handmaidens. And think of all the housing that would be freed up, though we'll have to get rid of all those heavy imitation walnut bookcases housing the holy books.

* No DH would never be so unPC as to forget all the non-Jerusalem based creeds. Just so long as they keep their heads down.

Housing CSO's going cheap...

Look what the NSW govt hopes to buy for $22 an hour! Could explain the mystery of why all the beaut things dreamed up in HousingNSW head office seem to die a horrible death by the time they make it to the local offices.

DH's offspring, who has learning difficulties, just got her first job which requires a bit of cleaning and helping out in after-school care. And she gets $20 and hour!

But HNSW iss offreing $22 an hour for which they want social work experience, managing a caseload of often very troubled people....

$22 an hour equates to about $40,000 a year. That's if you never have a sick day or a holiday, and work through all the public holidays as well of course.

$22 for being strong-minded. Hmm... what does this mean? Probably a code word for working in a system in which, thanks to Labor's* big idea, "Reshaping Public Housing", the majority of people who get public housing will have a drug problem or a mental illness... So perhaps

Strong-minded = un-trained, de facto mental health worker

Still desperate for a job, no matter what the pay? You'll find this one registered with Quay Employment.

Dept of Housing - Client Services Officer - Inner West

Our client requires a strong minded and experienced customer service representatives preferably with a background in social work or community care to assist with managing a portfolio of clients. Your role will be to manage your portfolio of clients while under the guide and with support from your team leader to ensure you provide high level customer service while juggling a large workload of differing priorities.

Located close to Busses. Paying $22 P/H your duties will include but won't be limited to:

· Managing a portfolio of clients and looking after their special needs
· Counter customer service
· Client visits
· General Administration

Must have:

· Previous experience in a customer service background
· Social Work or Case Work desirable
· Excellent open and friendly communication skills both verbal and written
· Proven conflict resolution skills
· Ability to understand and interpret policy
· A current driver's license a must
· Ability to work well under pressure as well as in a team environment
· Understanding of confidentiality and a strong work ethic

*Not sure whose big idea it was, but it happened under Joe Tripodi's watch, and his protege, Kristina Keneally's hubby had a lot to do with it,

All we are saying, is give Rees a chance

Whatever happened to the gentle journo's agreement that some topics should be off-limit in the public interest?

For cryin out loud, capitalism is melting down, the barbarians are at the gate, (and in a worrying develpment, it's "their" barbarians, not "our" barbarians), and nobody knows how many of us will be jobless, if not homeless, by the end of the financial year, assuming there'll even be a financial year once the dollar sinks below the event horizon. NSW's coffers are bare-ish, our infrastructure is crumbling, and to top it all off, the Emirates own the Melbourne Cup, nobody told DH, and now they're hoofing it off all the way back to Bahrain or wherever with DH's 5 bucks on that nogood Irish, Michael O'Reilly,

And with all this calamity going on, what tack is the State's maybe most influential journo, the political editor of the SMH taking? Check out Andrew Clennell's hatchet job in Saturday's SMH, and decide whether he's got any other mission than to undermine the Premier, rub his nose in his inexperience, and score as many cheap points as he can. Doesn't the Political Editor of the SMH have anything better to do than ask 3 times about love and traffic?

When you open the spillgates and deluge the Premier of NSW in a flashflood of drivel, it's not just the Premier who drowns, the whole State drowns with him.

Should a government fall because a politician has a temper, and grabs someone's leg in the heat of the moment? Is that all? Are staffers made of glass? Maybe they should teach the delicate young plants in staffer school that politics is a high-conflict zone, not a personal growth sharing circle. Stewart should rise and fall on his record, nothing else. If there's a stench around him, show us where its coming from, don't just wave the the nearest red herring under our noses.

And who cares if Rees made a throwaway comment that didn't quite come off? Only this morning that dullest and most affectless of journalistic heavies, Laurie Oakes, was on Radio National breakfast lamenting that politicians nowadays never say anything risky or colourful. How can they if they are put through the grinder for every misstep?

Since when is inexperience a crime? The young feller stepped up to the plate. He's obviously got brains, he's doing his best to save the situation. Maybe our commentators should give him some credit for having the guts and give him a chance.

Mystery deepens as 30,000 NSW renters simply vanish!

Shock figures released at yesterday's Housing Budget Estimates committee meeting reveal that 30,000 people have vanished from NSW Public Housing waiting lists in the space of 1 year!

But only about 110 new dwellings have been built.

So where did they all go?

Did they manage to find suitable accommodation in the midst of this nation's greatest housing crisis, when the eligibility limit for public housing hovers near the poverty line?

Did 30,000 BMW owners fess up during the Tenant Fraud Amnesty and voluntarily make way for those "more in need"?

Did those waiting more than 10 years give up out of sheer frustration?

Snatched wholesale by aliens?

Responding to a question from Greens Senator Sylvia Hale about whether the numbers had declined due to frustration at the long wait, or due to tightening of eligibility requirements, new Housing Minister David Borger replied that the decline was thanks to regular surveys to determine ongoing eligibility and better matching of applicants to criteria (which are tighter). In addition, Mr Borger stated that "a number" of products like Rentstart, others products unspecified, allowed renters to make choices in relation to private housing. Umm, Rentstart applies to people with savings of less than $1000 dollars, pays 75 percent of bond, then you're on your own in Sydney's ferocious rental market, and if you're not mentally ill, disabled or aged, but merely on a low income, you haven't got a snowflakes of getting public housing in less than 8 years. In short, we're talking about closer applicant matching to the complete non-availability of housing to anyone on a low income who can still crawl.

What it's all about is that 40,000 sounds a lot better than an embarassing 70,000, and a positively excruciating 100,000 the year before. It reduces the pressure on governments to cough up a greater share of the national cake to help struggling renters.

But before you get up in arms about Housing NSW, who struggle gamely with inadequate funding, blame the Howard government. No wonder there's no new housing. They robbed Public Housing of $3 billion worth of funding over their miserable tenure. And alas, $3 billion these days wouldn't buy you a magnum of bubbly at a Bank Holiday picnic...

Quibble, quibble, foil and squabble...

Quibble, quibble, foil and squabble...
O'er entrails of sub-prime bubble


Here's some choice hocus-pocus from our economic wizard, Malcolm Turnbull and his Sorcerer's Apprentice, Julie Bishop, spotted at dead o' night on Lateline. They'll do anything to foil Labor initiatives

TONY JONES: Earlier today Mr Malcolm Turnbull told a radio interviewer, "We would no doubt have designed it differently", meaning the package. What would you have done differently

JULIE BISHOP: Well, that's why Malcolm said we wouldn't quibble about it. There is no point now saying had we been in government...


TONY JONES: You are quibbling about it. That's the point.


JULIE BISHOP: No, Tony.


TONY JONES: By saying we would've done it differently you're quibbling about it. What would you have done differently?


JULIE BISHOP: Tony, isn't it reasonable for the Opposition to ask what the assumptions underlying the Government's judgment...


TONY JONES: That's not my question. You've made that point, with respect. Mr Turnbull says you would've done it differently, so what would you have done differently?


JULIE BISHOP: I understand Malcolm was saying had we been in Government we may well have done things differently, we may well have looked at a different composition, we might have looked the tax cuts, we might have reconsidered the first home owners matter. We might have got information as to whether or not this would be an inflationary package and if you calibrate it had another way. But what we're say something we would like to know the basis upon which the Government made this judgment, that $10.4 billion should be expended this way with these component parts.

The Chutzpah of Malcolm Turnbull

To those of you who lack a rich Yiddish vocabulary, the classic definition of Chutzpah is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

We might say that Malcolm, having killed off the evil gnome, John Howard, (may his name be blotted out!), figuratively speaking, by to all intents and purposes blotting his vote-losing name out, now wishes to appeal to us on the basis of big daddy's budget surplus alone.

Mr Turnbull never tires of claiming the moral high ground for this surplus, which he claims was accumulated by "sound economic management".

Sound economic management, our ragged ars*s!

Just ask any of the toothless wretches living around DH's estate.

The budget surplus, Malcolm, was extracted from our teeth!

And then there was the $3 billion cut from public housing.

Then there were the cuts to disability services, and the disability organisations that advocated for them,

What a master of the excision of memory.

Come back, Elites, all is forgiven!

DH of course has always been a member of the elite.

The elites as we know can be recognised by 3 things:

• a love of lattes
• a pied-a-terre in the Inner West
• some rudimentary level of higher education

And DH qualifies on all counts

Some people might say: But how can DH be one of the elite? She:

• does not own a major share in the means of production
• can't afford dental care, holidays, new clothes, or even a friand to go with her latte
• doesn't jet around the world, own a yacht, or get invited to weekends away on the Packer's estates

Nah, doesn't matter. According to experts on elitism, Miranda Devine, Gerald Henderson, Michael Duffy, and all those other champions of the "real people", that doesn't count. The real give-away is having a social conscience and a few brain folicules to rub together.

Well, we elites have been generous and patient. We have let bona-fide battlers, like George W Bush and John Howard have a turn in the play pen. We're even giving Malcolm Turnbull, that child of hard times, a bit of a go.

But with Western Civilisation about to go down the gurgler thanks to the free rein given to President Bozo the Clown, it's time we elites clamped down.


The final straw was watching Michael Duffy's pin-up girl, Sarah Palin, humiliating herself in an interview with Katie Couric.

Noblesse oblige, surely, dictates that we put these dummies out of their misery.

Has the world gone completely mad? What have we come to when a politician's greatest claim to office is her own stupidity and wilful ignorance?

More of a worry is that no matter how low these characters nosedive, there are still huge numbers of people who will vote for them!

Couldn't we send anyone who is now, or has ever been, a registered Republican or a member of a Pentacostalist church, to Guantanamo for some re-education in the "American Way"?

"Free Market Experiment We Had to Have" tanks

YIPPEE!

The Free Market Experiment We Had to Have has tanked!

Socialists are back in business! (Just don't breathe the S-word out loud)

Didn't we tell them so!

So let's get back to bashing the rich which is right and proper.

Yeah! How cool would it be to sink the confederacy of dunce presidents, carpetbaggers, robber barons, corporate criminals, greedy Pig bankers, hucksters, subprime pyramid salesmen, craven politicians, spin merchants, welfare bashers, and all the dumb schmucks who've been duped by them, the pentacostalist nincompoops, the Joe Sixpacks - the ignoramuses who feel entitled to comment on things they're too lazy to educate themselves about.

Bit of a worry though that this bunch of dolts and crooks could be the concrete shoes that drag the rest of us down the gurgler...

Unfortunately DH doesn't understand high finance well enough to know whether sinking the banks will sink the rest of us. It's tempting to want to gloat, but history does teach us that when things tank, it's the poor that bear the brunt.

Bail out People, Sink the Banks

Bail out Main Street not Wall Street

In the US, they're calling for:

• Putting real regulations back on runaway financial corporations, and taking an ownership stake in exchange for any taxpayer support
• Providing mortgage relief so ordinary Americans stop losing their homes
• Putting millions to work by investing in new green jobs and infrastructure
• Investing in a health care plan to cover everyone

It all seems pretty relevant to Australia. Just add " invest in affordable housing" to that list.

How to fix the Wall Street mess

Can't go past this item by Michael Moore! Here's an excerpt:

The richest 400 Americans -- that's right, just four hundred people -- own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion.

During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion -- the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the "bailout." Why don't they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They'd still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that -- at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do -- spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?
I would like to propose my own bailout plan. My suggestion are predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps.

Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times:

There... is... no... free... lunch.

And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare!

So, there will be no handouts from us to you. (more...)

Beam us up, Scotty!

Guess what Scott Morrison, the new Turnball appointee to the shadow housing ministry reckons is the solution to the nation's housing crisis?

(Admittedly he is new to the Housing portfolio, so it's only fair to allow him a certain amount of bluster room while he comes up to speed.)

He told assembled affordable housing lobbyists at Wednesday's National Affordable Housing Advocacy day that the main way to solve the nation's housing problems was... wait for it...

"Strong economic management"

Well if that's the case, Scotty, how come after 12 years of Liberal rule we're in the fine mess we're in?

Aren't you the party that claims the high ground on economic management?

Lemme guess, blame state governments and local councils and taxes?

The member for Cook, out around Botany Bay, didn't disappoint.

Ho hum... pass the buck round one more time ...

Mr Morrison seemed like a likeable, intelligent sort of feller. So what's he doing in the Liberal party? When addressing the lobbyists, Mr Morrison took care to pay his respects to the dedication of public sector workers when it came to housing the poor and clothing the naked and all that. But when he listed the organisations he respected, they were all faith-based.

A quick check of the Scott Morrison website shows why. He's one of those prosperous young things who workships at the Shirelive Church. In short another upwardly mobile Hillsong pentacostalist taking over the Liberal Party.

Mind you, DH doesn't mind the faithful as much as she did in her youth. You might as well believe in something other than Malthus and Darwin. Anything to keep us cheerful as we contemplate how we consumed ourselves into oblivion. Since the US meltdown, the only place the underclasses are ever likely to get a decent home is in heaven.

So beam us up, Scotty!

DH goes to Canberra for National Rental Housing Advocacy Day

Happy National Rental Housing Advocacy Day!

DH popped in to Canberra on Wednesday to sort out a few things on your behalf.

She had the best time treading the corridors of power, telling her hard luck story to any Minister who would listen, and looking incredibly important, responsible and resolute in her black trouser suit!

So anyway, let's get down to business...

A Historic Opportunity for Social Housing

Why?

Because the Commonwealth and the States are negotiating a brand new National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) which determines how the Federal Government funds social housing.

But guess what?
The amount of money the Federal government has given the states for housing barely covers their operational costs. There's nothing in it for new construction.

And the bad news is:

• there are nearly 200,000 people on public housing waiting lists.
  And that's only because low income working families don't even bother to apply
  
• there are at least 600,000 families and singles in housing stress (ie more than 30% of their gross income goes on rent)
  
• there are 105,000 people homeless

The supply of public housing has gone down by
30,000
dwellings since 1996

Whose fault is it?

Oddly enough, 1996 is when the Howard Government got in, and proceeded to slash 3.5 BILLION out of the money they gave to the states for public housing

So,

Whadda we want?

• 30,000 additional public and non-profit housing by 2012
  
• $5 billion more than we got out of the last Commonwealth State Housing Agreement
  
• an Affordable Housing Growth Fund because we need new housing.
  About 7.5 billion over the next 4 years should be a start
  
• a separate Operating Subsidy program of $7.5 Billion
  just to keep us standing still in the same spot
  
• a 30% increase in Commonwealth rental assistance.
  This would put an extra $15 per week into the pockets of the poor buggers doing it tough in private rental housing.

When do we want it?

Over the next 4 years

When are we gonna get it?

In our dreams, according to the Leftie turned Hollowperson who DH managed to buttonhole in a corridor...

Malcolm Turnbull, Woolly Waffler

Wake up without a hangover? Miss that swollen-tongued, brain filled with cotton-wool feeling?

DH has just the cure for you.

Check out any recent interview with Poor Malcolm. His monotonous wafflings will soon have you thumping the sides of your head, clawing your earholes with you pinkies, trying to clear the sudden fog in your brains.

Dear Liberal voters, DH knows you feel encouraged by Malcolms apotheosis.

But darlings, it's about more than having a noble profile and a magisterial way of padding out a striped suit. He does look grand, ones grant you. But one does have to be able to speak clearly and explain oneself, one would have thought. Patrician vowels in themselves are not quite sufficient, surely.

Ya shoudda heard him today waffling on the Fran Kelly on the ABC.

With this guy, its one step forward, two steps back. Out pops a word from his mouth, two of them are retracted. Today's classic, a telling exchange on every level was.

Fran Kelly: Who's your favourite footy team?

Malcolm Rex: Er, well, er, I vote for the Roo, er, vote for???, ha-ha-ha, er, I support the the Roosters

He's still got nothing better to do than go on about Kevin Rudd's overseas trip.

Finally challenged by Kelly"

So what would you do if you were the Prime Minister?

Malcolm goes:

Um, err, [thinks quickly: That was a curly one. Um, what would I do??.]
Um, well, I would come back.

[... incomprehensible 2 minute waffle about markets ...]

Of course DH, can be accused of being biased about the liberal party. She is still feeling dirty about things like the way they extracted their budget surplus from the teeth of the lower orders, the children going mad in detention centres, and all the other stuff in the right hand column

Shouldn't Malcolm start by saying sorry?

... To be continued, when DH gets a chance to listen to the podcast. There will be rich pickings.

The Plight of Poor Malcolm

Heart-breaking isn't it?

Malcolm's got it all except underprivilege.

DH sympathises. She doesn't think she could live off more than $273 a week. It might cruel her claims to moral superiority.

Then there's our new Premier Nathan Rees, bignoting himself by claiming to be a garbo. Yeah right, while supporting himself through an arts degree.

Kevin Rudd's doing it tough of course, and who can forget instant Housing expert, Cherie I-grew-up-in-Minto Burton (until the family moved to Drummoyne, they say)

There's self-made landlord, Matt Brown, and who knows, or dare ask, what hardships the likes of Joe Tripodi and
Eddie Obeid have salted away offshore.

Kiama Karma: Matt Brown dobbed

Ex-Housing Minister Matt Brown's karma caught up with him yesterday. As Swamiji Semi-Detached Houso teaches us: "He who encourages the riff-raff to dob on their neighbours, shall himself be dobbed in by his parliamentary colleagues. And if he's not careful he may be reincarnated as a lower life-form, such as a real estate agent".

While Housing NSW's compassionate leftist hand invests heavily in community development, ex-Minister Brown's punitive Rightist hand undermined hard-won trust by encouraging public housing tenants to act out their petty resentments against their neighbours. Only recently, Mr Brown proudly trumpeted the number of people who had denounced their fellow housos to the "Housing Police" in the early days of the Tenant Fraud amnesty.

Mind you, there's a lot to be said for casting out from our midst these BMW-driving silvertails with their bizarre fetish for cross-dressing in trackie-daks and slumming it in sleazy low-rent ghettos. They should be corralled in Vaucluse or Pymble where we can keep an eye on them!

But then again, it's not for nothing that the Mighty Bronzed Oz despise dobbers. Nothing undermines our great traditions of social capital accumulation (that's "mateship" to the non-latte-drinkers amongst us) more

It's not the undies that undid him

But it's not the undies that undid Matt Brown in DH's eyes. What a man does to unwind in the privacy of his Ministerial suite on his own self-funded sofa is his own business. If keeping the lid on such antics wasn't the civilised media norm, we'd have heard a lot more, for instance, about how a certain Minister from one of our barbarous neighbouring states earned the moniker of "Swizzlestick". But admittedly, that particular politician is believed to be sufficiently talented to be worth preserving.

No, the true award for tastelessness came with the parading of first Matt Brown's niece and then his hapless child for the media, in the sad belief that this would somehow make things better. With such poor political judgment, it's no wonder that the man left no visible mark on the housing portfolio, other than to parrot his illustrious mentor Joe Tripodi's tenant-bashing catchphrases. And to rush Australia's most discrimatory legislation through Parliament, the extraordinary "Tenant Fraud Amendment 2008" which makes the NSW Department of Housing into the state's, and maybe the nation's, only government department with the powers of criminal prosecution.

With such acumen, the Minister will make a grand real estate agent. While holidaying in Kiama recently, DH thinks she found just the shopfront (left) for a start-up.

0 0 0 0 0

Oh, alright, alright, so DH was given notice by her higher self recently. Well, she can hardly be expected to stay silent in the face of taunts from her fan-base (all 1 of him) that she was going soft on Housing Ministers.

Desperate Houso Evicted!

Dear Readers,

The time has come when I must evict DH from her tenancy in my teeming, overcrowded brain.

I have tolerated this strident termagant for quite long enough. She has failed to bring in even so much as a googly cent for all the time she has wasted on ranting and trying to be funny. Times are getting tougher and I regret that I am no longer in a position to act the philanthropist or carry on subsidizing my inner "artist".

The fact is that I'm totally demoralised, and drastic action is called for. My market rent has gone up to $440 a week, and what with paying HECS-HELP and SFSS, with the anachronistic Rental Subsidy Eligibility limit threatening to cut out just at the maximum I can hope to earn with my meagre talents as a $35 an hour contractor (no holiday pay, sick pay, or any kind of leave, remember), I'm giving up all hope of self-realisation. Instead, I plan to spend any free time I have trying to nut out a system for winning Lotto at last.

Yes, yes, I know, private renters are doing it tough too. But is it my fault that the Howard Government neglected housing policy for 10 years and landed us all in this fine mess?

Is it my fault that all we've had to stand up for us losers in NSW is the likes of Tripodi, Cherie Burton, and Public Landlord No1, the Overlord of the Underwear, Matt Brown?

Besides, now that we don't have Mr Banality-0f-Evil himself, John Howard, to kick around anymore, the joy has simply gone out of blogging.

...

It all began way back in 2005, with the upbeat entry Unemployed again!

When I first let DH have a free rein here, I was hoping to have a good old vent about how I being pincered in a poverty trap between Centrelink's mean-spirited bunglings and DoH's short-sighted work disincentives. Perhaps I even had some vague ambition that one day "Desperate Houso" might contribute some modest footnote to a future history detailing the death throes of the Welfare State.

Little did I realise that Desperate Houso's diary would one day become a hugely popular website amongst some of the world's most neglected niche populations. I refer, of course, to South American Nazi Sympathisers With Dyslexia, and Florida Retirees with Oral-Hygiene Issues.

Hardly a day goes by that some would-be Nazi with a spelling problem does not lob here to read the groundbreaking expose which proved that Howard's new National Aspirationalism was nothing more than a Nasi Party front. Or have the Brazilians been misleading us all these years into thinking their alphabet contains the letter "Z"?

As for the Florida pensioners, my impassioned outcry, Wake up and smell the bad breath. Something rotten in the state of Howard's Australia which so resoundingly denounced the Howard Government's lowest act, the destruction of free public clinics, has proved an irresistible drawcard. Clearly there are more Yanks out there worrying about their morning breath than they do about their failing sub-prime mortgage sector.

Apart from that the only other conspicuous search term is "That nincompoop, Brendan Nelson". And that's not likely to last much longer.

Not a lot to say after that.

Just itching to ditch a blog that's just not fun anymore...

Google StreetView nabs BMW

Being the public-spirited houso that she is, DH feels she has been seriously letting herself down.

With Housing NSW' Tenant Fraud Hotline in full swing, she has so far failed to dob in so much as one single BMW owner! She knows they're out there in droves, her Housing Ministers have told her so, yet she daily struggles with the guilty knowledge that it is only her lack of vigilance that has prevented the apprehension of these unconscionable barnacles on the public purse.

So when she first heard of Google Streetview yesterday, she realised immediately that she had the perfect tool to do the necessary large scale reconnaisance of the neighbourhood!

While it is true that she has not so far been able to capture any BMW in flagrante in the neighbourhood, DH wasn't born yesterday, you know. Why, there are no lengths to which the sybarites of public housing will not go to conceal the evidence of their opulent lifestyles! So she was a wise-up as soon as she discovered the suspicious object depicted. She anticipates that she will be in a position to make a citizen's arrest just as soon as she has had a chance to nip down the road and peak under the next-door's tarp.

She urges her fellow tenants to follow her example, do the right thing, and keep a close watch on their precincts. It is to be hoped that the Department's Tenant Fraud SWAT team has lost no time in establishing an evaluatory committee to investigate the addition of this invaluable tool to the Departmental Surveillance Armoury.

Note: DH hastens to advise Housing NSW that the late model Hyundai Getz peeking out of her garage belongs to a visiting friend.

Our lives on Kafkalink's lawn

DH has been peremptorily summonsed to an interview with Kafkalink for a "random sample survey" being conducted on her Newstart Allowance.

She will have to rustle up in short order:

• proof of birth
• original documents to the value of 50 points that will help confirm your identity
• proof of Australian residence, if you were born outside Australia (for example, your passport or
• details of any employment undertaken in the last 12 months (for example, payslips)
• all current bank, building society or credit union statements or passbooks
• details of any income you receive from any other sources (for example, real estate, boarders,
• details of any assets with proof of income (if any) you get from these assets
• details of what you have done to find work in the past 4 weeks (if you have a Job Seeker Diary

There is nothing "random" about it. Centrelinks's internal administration is so hopeless that their left hands don't know what their right hands are doing. DH is, as befits her advancing years, on quarterly reporting, rather than fortnightly reporting. So when she reported her last job, a contract for 4 weeks beginning in May, she was told not to worry, just report it on the 1st of July. Idiot she is, she trusted them and didn't insist on a written copy of the determination. Meanwhile, data matching apparently shook her out in the interim, thus it was that the system once again went into fibrillation with all the alarm bells going hysterical

Now you would think that with so many people on quarterly reporting, Kafkalink would have figured out a process for handling intermediate income without dragooning its "customers" through this tiresome process that we have all gone through so many times already.

HCF toothache agony

DH has paid a fortune to HCF over the years for very little benefit.

She is in it basically for 3 reasons

1. Howard's stick - join now or burn in public hospital limboland for every
   


2. Howard's destruction of dental hospitals. She never wanted to be in a position to have to walk around with a big black hole in her smile.
   


3. She is able to bundle her mother, now 80, with herself and child, and so it seemed like a necessary investmant

Currently the rate is about $55 a week. Thank Goodness, none of them have been in hospital. Well her mother has, but she was advised that she would get a better deal in a public ward, so never used it.

Now finally, when DH is getting to the age when her investment in Health Insurance might reasonably be expected to have paid off (God Forbid!), current economic realities are forcing her to lose her grasp on the payments.

She needs to have an infected tooth removed, but she is getting up to nearly $500 in arrears. What to do? Borrow money to catch up with the payments, and hope her job-seeking efforts pay off soon? Drop the insurance and just pay the dentist? How agonising would that be after having sunk so much money into this outfit over the years?

You would think that a wealthy country like Australia, with a fortune coming in in mineral sales, and hardly any population to speak of compared to the rest of the world, could organise to have its population's toothaches cured, without having recourse to visiting Thai Budhhist monks coming here as an act of charity to fix the teeth of the poor, (as reported in the Daily Telegraph. See Wake up and smell the bad breath. Something rotten in the state of Howard's Australia.)

The Chrismas Island Hilton: A Holiday Camp for Housos?

One of the most depressing things about being caught in a poverty trap is that you never get to have a real holiday, no matter how hard you work.

DH and daughter have not been out of Sydney for more than 3 days at a time in 21 years, except for the few times they wore out their ever-dwindling welcome with their Qld friends*.

So it was with a growing sense of excitement that she read today's news that Christmas Island had been refurbished to Hilton standards

She has always longed for a Pacific Island holiday! Why not send all up in relays, for a well deserved break?

As long as it's not a one way ticket...

The Brits thought of it first in 18th century to deal with their excess populations of ill-housed wretches.

The Krauts refined the concept.

Excuse DH, but being a post-war baby, the idea of "Concentration Camps To Go" in remote locations is a bit of a worry. Course it cd never happen here.

Iemma hires Pope, Randwick Racecourse, to hear Houso Confessions

So now we know why Iemma and da Boys had to hire Randwick Racecourse and bring in the Pope!

It was the only way to fit in the 350,000 housos lining up to confess their sins in this month of the Tenant Fraud Confessional and Amnesty.

For whomsoever amongst us hath not salted away a bit of moonlighting income to pay the electricity bills or fix the kids' teeth, let them cast the first stone.

Housos Against Global Warming

DH calls upon all her fellow housos to give up their wicked fuel guzzling ways and donate their BMWs and Hummers to charity.

It's time to take a principled stand!

The Horror, the Horror: China, Zimbabwe, Iran, Indonesia, Burma

rHow UTTERLY repulsive it was to see China's show relay in Tibet

DH is usually pretty strict about keeping this blog within its parochial parameters

But enough is enough

Then there is Zimbabwe, And the mealy-mouthed African states totally incapable of standing up for justice for their own people.

Then there are the Muslim religious fascists who have declared war on the West,

Now poor Schapelle Corby is rotting away in an Indonesian sh*thole. No doubt she smuggled a bit of dope. But this is no way to treat a human being

Everywhere you look, rotten, corrupt states getting away with it.

And at every turn the Australian left has gone to the dogs and panders to worn out arguments that everything that has gone wrong in these benighted nations is the West's fault.

It's enough to make you sick

Still, it's true that we are oil addicts and are now beginning to pay the price.

Accordingly, DH now calls upon all her fellow housos to give up their BMWs

as a sacrifice to World Peace.

Holiday Choices, Labor's newest Affordable Housing Strategy?

Today's SMH reports:

"Under [Howard's] Work Choices employers and staff could cash out up to two weeks of an employee's annual leave each year. Labor's standard will allow individual industrial awards to include provisions for cashing out annual leave with no ceiling on the amount that may be paid out each year."

This from a Labor Government???

Is this some kind of backdoor "Affordable Housing" strategy, tempting workers to solve a systematic problem with an individual solution?

It is clear where the extra money will go.

Some Holiday Choices! Workers will be forced to make the agonising decision. Shall I sacrifice my rest, my health, my family time to catch up on my mortgage or rent arrears".

This "Sophie's Choice" should never be imposed on the vulnerable members of society.

Only yesterday. DH praised Rudd to the skies. Kevin Rudd, go back out in the cold please.

And only yesterday, under the heading NSW Govt exploits contract workers, DH explained very carefully how workers' entitlements are eroded by contract work, and how contract deals that looked so sweet 10 years ago are now leaving contractors far worse off in every way than permanent employees. All that is left is the illusion of freedom.

A corollary of this principle is that once employees trade their holidays away, they will never get them, let alone their health, back.

In what has been the most Judaeo-Ecumenical week in the history of this diary, DH, a card-carrying atheist yet, has had to remind Kevin Rudd once again to go back to his Bible and "Consider the lilies".

Dear friends, today's lesson calls Father Kevin to "Remember the Sabbath Day and Keep It Holy".

That simple tenet, the fundamental need for time for rest and replenishment, underpins the social justice ethic of Western Civ.

Not a good idea to throw this time-honoured principle to the dogs.

* The pic is a still from Sid Caesar's "Boardroom Lunch", which is not only brilliant slapstick, but in its ending, an education in realpolitik. Guaranteed to make your day

Praise Rudd and give the Della Bosca a rest

DH was a bit hard on Kevin Rudd about the work ethic, but the fact is that she thinks he's terrific.

 

She was fortunate enough to be in the audience at Q&A and was nervous as hell in anticipation of what she was sure would be a debacle.  She has never been one to take pleasure in seeing gladiators being thrown to the lions for the delectation of the mob.

 

But lo and behold, St Kev did battle with the lions and came out covered in honour and glory.

 

He was humorous, he was totally across everything,  he was compassionate, he was intelligent, quick on his feet, altogether bloody fantastic.

 

DH came away feeling that Australia couldn't be in better hands. What more can we ask of just one man?

 

* * * * *

 

Now poor Della Bosca. For heaven's sake, give the man a break. Does it ever occur to the ravening pack that what was at stake may not have been his own personal gain,  but also the stability and continuity of government. By all accounts, Della Bosca is an intelligent and competent minister.

 

How can anyone be expected to take on the vital job of government if they can be torn down for the slightest trivial character flaw?

 

Let s/he who is without blemish cast the first stone.

 

DH, BTW, has been convinced by people more knowledgable than herself, that a selective selloff of power stations is a good idea, what really matters is a strict regulatory regime to protect consumers against market failure. Still what does she know? Her general principles is, fools rush in, when it comes to difficult technological questions, but wise women abstain from taking sides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NSW Govt exploits contract workers

Continuing DH"s theme that the NSW public service appears to be held together by rubber bands and sticky tape:

 

DH is looking for contract work in the public service and noted a Grade 9/10 role being offered at the rate of $40 per hour.

 

Assuming an average Grade 9/10 salary per annum is $85,000, then to arrive at that figure, you would have to divided by 52 weeks, at 41 hrs per week.

 

HULLO!!!!

 

The whole idea of contract work was that you were supposed to be paid an extra high rate to compensate for the fact that you get

• no holiday pay
• no sick pay
• no training
• no bloody nothing except the hour by hour sweat of your brow.

As an old leftie, she knew the argument against contracting was perfectly clear. It was an appealing bait at first to get people to give up secure  wages and conditions, then once the work force has lost its rights, the contract wage will gradually drop.

 

From the figures above it is clear that this is exactly what has happened.

 

Contractors now earn in real terms no more that abt 75-80% of a permanent wage, if that.

 

Factoring in annual leave and sick leave, compassionate leave etc, and public holidays, that 85,000 shd be divided by 45, minus, lets say $1000 a year in training, works out at about $50 an hour.

 

DH is pretty hopeless about money, so if she has got it all wrong, please email her at desperate.houso@gmail.com

 

Oh and that's where Centrelink's big stick comes in.

 

Woe betide you if you refuse to accept the rip-off.

 

That's the way we are turned into indentured laborers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brother Kevin, for God's sake, consider the lilies ...

[Told you so, continued: This is a reprint from 04 Dec 2007. ]

Dear Brother Kevin, DH has had to speak to you about this before, when you endorsed Howard's tough Welfare to Workhouse rules for the disabled. Which you announced, incredibly, the day after the Christmas holiday, 27th Dec 2006! Let DH remind you of Christ's words, and God knows, she's an atheist, so this should really not be necessary.

Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they
spin, but Solomon, in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew,
6:28)

Do you think Jesus might have been saying something about respecting each human's true nature, and allowing creation to take care of itself, without necessary flogging each creature to death to increase their production of beauty? And didn't God also admonish us, (more or less), to

Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy
Neither shall ye work thy Ministers too hard
Lest they become taskmasters over us all

The idea, Brother Kevin, was to lead Australia out of bondage, and free us from Howard's cruel Welfare-to-Workhouse taskmasters, not to lead us into bondage.

The idea of a Labor partywas not to make workers labour more. It was to make their labours easier. So take a moment to breathe deeply, and notice that progressives and humanists have won the election. There is no need to kowtow to the most punitive and retrograde elements of society!

Now please make sure our MP's and Ministers get adequate rest over Christmas, and set an example to all of us.

Read DH's Christmas 2006 Message to Brother Kevin

NSW, failing State thanks to Microsoft and SAP?

Followers of this blog may be wondering where DH has disappeared to over the past month. She is ashamed to admit she has been moonlighting in the Public Service. She apologises for being pulled away from providing this useful service to the public by considerations of mere money, not that there's much left once DoH gets its cut. But Centrelink made her do it.

 

She has now had 3 public services jobs, and let's hope 3 swallows dont make a failed state. 

 

But if these 3 jobs are any indication, NSW is held together by a few staples and rubber bands. smoke mirrors and spit. And the heroic efforts of the unfortunate hard-working and conscientious public service workers trying to hold it all together.

 

In fact DH is rapidly coming to the conclusion that Microsoft and SAP are to blame. Or significantly, anhow. While politicians and policy makers spin grand plans and fantasies, pity the poor workers who are trying to implement it, with new software releases pouring down on their heads at regular intervals, each more complicated than the last, Each making the simplest procedure more and more complex, with more and more stupid questions from that f%ing little paperclip person, may he be booted to hell along with his designed.

 

Remember built-in obsolence? How the big C (don't mention the C*p*t*l*sm word) needs to keep selling stuff, and so has to keep releasing newer and worse versions of stuff that worked fine before.

 

DH"s experience in every place she has worked is that they are understaffed, there is no time for staff to be trained in the software, each release makes their work more complicated, they do not understand the capacities and limitations of their technology. You find management spending a day a month just filling in codes for their own timesheets. It's tragic.

 

Housing Minister Matt Brown talks tough (to small fry)

Mild-mannered NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown is the the latest in a long line of Labor Housing Ministers (think the "Honorable" Joe "Mr Clean" Tripodi, and Cherie "Trust Me, I was a Houso" Burton) who get off on talking tough to small fry.



Referring to the new Tenant Fraud Amendments to the Housing Act 2001 tabled in Parliament last week, which will see draconian measures to combat public housing tenant fraud, Matt Brown told the Daily Telegraph "We won't cop anyone ripping off those most in need".

And BMW owners have had a wake-up call too from our fearless Minister. They can forget about applying for public housing now. They'll just have to go back to the North Shore where they belong.

This inflammatory language is certain to rebound on the vast majority of honest tenants scratching to get by in poorly maintained housing stock, thanks to combined Howard Government parsimony and lack of commitment and imagination from NSW Labor.

Like the renowned Strong Man of NSW, Morris Iemma, (oh, please, don't frighten us!), young Matt has taken to talking big, in language he wouldn't dare use if he was targetting the major perpetrators of fraud in this country, big business tax "minimizers".

Think Kerry Packer, who got a State Funeral for his services to Tax Evasion. That parasite is still getting increasingly moist-eyed obituaries lamenting the "good old days", when the bugger paid practically no tax, and then gambled away the hard labor of Australians in overseas casinos and horse races.

Private housing dwellers rip off public by $700,000,000

A recent report in the "The Australian" estimates that a number of Australia's wealthiest millionaires are defrauding the Australian public by at least $700,000,000 in tax evasion schemes. According to a figures based on an unrelated press release (see below), from NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown, this massive amount would purchase 3000 public housing dwellings. We can only hope that our indefatigable parliamentarians will put as much legislative effort into naming, shaming and prosecuting their wealthy scrounger business mates, as they do to "protecting" all us "good tenants" who do not currently have a pied-a-terre in Liechtenstein.

If only our Housing Ministers could figure out a better way of being "fair" to us housos than bringing calumny on all our heads with press releases catchily titled "Crackdown on rip-offs to create fairer public housing in NSW "...

Perhaps its time to call these these private housing tax cheats by a new name: AntiSocial Housos.

Whatever happened to the good ole' Class Struggle? Bring back the good old days...

Disclaimer: In principle DH supports exposing wealthy cheats no matter where they live. She does not currently have any assets in Liechtenstein.

DH, Done diddled by Commonwealth Bank

Ken Done and DH lose three quarters of personal fortune to CBA!

DH would like to extend her sympathies to her fellow Sydney Icon, Ken Done. She knows exactly how he feels.

Yes, she, too, has had three quarters of her personal fortune devoured by the profit-hungry ex "People's Bank".

Admittedly, DH's loss was $70 ...

While Done's was $53,000,000

But while she admits that she lost significantly less in absolute terms, she reckons the magnitude of the disaster, measured by their respective abilities to put a meal on the table at the end of the fortnight, is about equal.

DH lost hers, as battlers regularly do, to "Overdrawn fees". Fall $10 short when the electricity bill direct debit goes through, and CBA add $35 to your misery. As do all its rogue banking mates.

Shouldn't there be a law preventing banks from charging pensioners these miserable fees, when they know full well that the amount will be covered in the next day's automatic pension deposit?

Criminal entrapment? D'oHLink forcing mothers into black economy

DH is hearing increasing evidence that D'ohLink, (the unholy alliance of NSW Labor's Housing policies and the remnant of the dog's breakfast that was the Howard Government's welfare policy), is forcing sole parents into the underground economy.

One story DH has heard is of the sole parent of two disabled children who spent 4 years acquiring a tertiary teaching qualification. She was very excited to get her first job which was ideal in every way. Including having child friendly hours, being close to home and a great place to work.

There was only one flaw. She found she was financially better off working 2 days than the 5 days required. Not being able to reach agreement with her employers, she was forced to resign.

She now works as a house cleaner. Last time DH saw her, she looked a wreck. Why? She had found herself a good job, but was required to work the 3am shift, and then come home to her demanding children.

What a waste for the whole nation!
A waste of energy, a waste of hard work, a waste of education, a waste of training.

And if this good woman, who is the salt of the earth, gets found out, she will be tainted with the crime of fraud, for nothing more than wanting to provide for her children so that they can participate in society.

It's all a bit reminiscent of Britain in the 18th century, where the poor were criminalised and exported to the colonies. It's just as well there are no places left up for colonisation. (Don't mention Christmas Island or Nauru, lest some eager beaver politician gets another bright idea!)

What on EARTH are the governments of this nation thinking? Who on earth benefits from the criminalisation? Nobody!

Tripodi ICAC-ing himself?

Given the bad smell that's been hanging around our late unlamented housing minister for the last few years, it's been a longtime coming.

Housos with long memories will remember Joe as the Minister for Divesting Housos of BMW's.

Hockey's Last Stand: A Buffoon Capers to Oblivion

All the Liberals have left to offer the Nation ...

The rump of the once mighty Liberal Party.

(Apologies to the relatively handsome and intelligent Billy Bunter)

And on what major issue of principle did Joey Hockey,
(egged on by young Abbott Minor)
choose to take his last stand?

He doesn't want to be made to work!

Eat your Workchoices, Ham Hocks!

And if Hockey refuses to work ?

What a pleasure it would be to see him breeched from Parliament
by the same cruel standards he imposed on low income Australians.

How sweet it'd be to see Hockey, schoolboy cap in hand, queuing up for Newstart!

Hocks demonstrating that even a cardboard Rudd has more brains

The pathetic fools! Now their true colours are there for everyone to see. Under the watch of these pitiful buffoons, the National housing crisis, now reaching tragic proportions was building. They knew it but they were too busy greasing their sectional interests with pork pies stolen from the national larder. No brains, no talent, no capacity for analysis, no vision, the only thing they knew to do was dogwhistle.

Skipping meals to pay rent
Sunanda Creagh and Phillip CooreyFebruary 22, 2008

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/02/21/1203467286233.html

RISING rents are forcing thousands of people to skip meals and admit they are too poor to send their children on school excursions, new figures reveal.
Housing experts warned yesterday that the home affordability crisis threatens to destabilise the economy and drive the country into recession.
And Labor says the Howard government knew more than two years ago that one-third of renters were suffering from rental stress but failed to acknowledge the problem.

Correction: Howard NOT a wallflower at Paddy's wake.

Major egg on face. DH so loved the story of John Howard being totally ignored at Paddy McGuinness' wake, that when she saw one of Paddy's drinking mates at the Unity, she couldn't resist barging in to hear the delicious story embellished again. Well, darn it! The story was not true! Apologies all around. Apparently the reality was that people were queuing up to talk to Howard, he was not particularly bailed up by local Labor Identity, and what's more he was buying drinks all round. What's more, the relayer of the tale, another local Labor Identity, was not even there, according to DH's informant.

Disappointing, but instructive for any budding journalist. DH's crowd all wanted to believe it so much!

DH was much disappointed. But greatly cheered up to check Sitemeter, and find someone had googled "Brendan Nelson is an imbecile", and was directed straight to this blog.

Remembering Paddy McGuiness

In memory of the Old Man Banksia of the Sydney Commentariat

DH finds herself missing Paddy's Black Watch from the picture window of Balmain's Unity Hall. She had long entertained a delicious Paddy McG fantasy in which she alone succeeded where others had failed. In this scenario, she sees herself, by means which are not entirely clear, in the midst of the charmed circle of Unity Hall quaffers. The brooding figure of Old Mr Darcy, ... err .. McGuinness, is amonst them, sulking into his ale, planning his next attack on idiot feminist harpies in control of Leichhardt Council. Suddenly, something DH says, some unique and piercing insight, (not specified in the fantasy) causes Rochester ... err... McGuinness to look up, and his moist and beady yet penetrating gaze, (which has not made contact with another pair of eyes since his split from the Alp of '78 (or thereabouts)) meets hers. Both are electrified! Taking each other's hands they fly... or rather, trundle, giving their advanced years and rather corpulent frames ... to the Garden... of the Circle Cafe, just down the road, coincidentally enough, unofficial Headquarters of the Allied Basketweavers and Latte-Quaffers Guild. There they chatter animatedly into the wee hours, trading reminiscences, he sharing a good half century of juicy political scuttlebutr, she writing it all down for that book she knows she has in her.

But here, dear reader, we must leave the pigeon pair.

For alas, it is too late, all too late!

DH did indeed make one attempt to turn this fantasy into a reality. In an Aha! moment, she knew she had the key to Paddy's heart with her own bee-in-a-bonnet issue, Leichhardt Council's Excellent Twinning-with-Palestine Adventure. Marching into the Unity Hall, she brazenly plonked herself, uninvited, at the table of the taken-aback denizens, and thrust her piece, The Mouse that Roared, Leichhardt Council Style, under PMcG's reluctant nose. But dashing her hopes of a short track to a lucrative career as a Quadrant gadfly, Paddy pointedly suggested she might prefer to send her masterpiece to the Village Voice, instead of (implicitly) bothering him. Nevertheless, DH's guess was correct: Paddy was sufficiently exercised to vouchsafe her a few pithy words on the abundant follies of Leichhardt Council, and its loony support for the pack of misfits and Anti-Semites that he averred to be the "Friends of Hebron" before subsiding moodily back into his paper and beer.

How to save face, as the seconds ticked by in increasingly awkward silence? Finally, putting her most insouciant voice on,

DH goes: "So I take it, I'm dismissed then?".

PMcG: Grunts assent. Subsides again into paper and ale.

No seriously, there was something about Paddy that DH admired greatly. He was true to his own irascible nature, he genuinely cared about the "real" battlers, even if he was not that competent at judging the difference. Paddy had in his own mind, in a prior encounter, decided that DH was a genuine battler, and she saw something unfailingly kindly in his eyes from that moment on. The last time she saw Paddy, it was a rainy day. He emerged from the Unity Hall arriving at the taxi rank a fraction ahead of DH lugging her shopping. When people are habitually socially avoidant, you have to read their eyes. What DH saw was an almost solicitous consideration. The warm memory stays with her, while some of his tirades against feminists and elite chatterers during his SMH just seem like foolishness from a long time ago.

As an active member of the Asperger and Autism disability community, DH is used to dealing with people with huge intellects and diminished social insight. Such people are invaluable members of society. It behoves society to read them correctly, and weigh their intellectual contribution separately from their lack of a nuanced understanding of social dynamics. DH is not making an unofficial diagnosis of Paddy McGuinness as an Asperger's Savant with a dose of an inherently "Oppositional Defiant" mindset, by any means. She hardly knew the man. But one of her crusades is to increase social harmony by taking a more accurate reading of where people's ideas and actions may originate.

When she walks past the Unity Hall, it is with loss and shock that she realises that he will never be there again, and the conversations she hoped she might yet have with him were not to be. (Tear drops into the keyboard).

One day later:

What on earth was DH thinking yesterday? PMcG was mostly a mischievous trouble-maker and rallying point for resentful misfits like himself. Sentimental outburst well and truly over.

Brendan Nelson's Sorry Housing Paradox:

Breathtaking Hypocrisy!

This is Rear-Admiral Brendan Nelson's breathtaking response to the Prime Minister's white paper to tackle the scandal of homelessness which affects about 100,000 Aussies every night:

According to the SMH

The white paper received the immediate backing of the Opposition. "It is one of the paradoxes of Australian society that our country is going so well whilst many families are struggling in day-to-day life, that we still have far too many people that are homeless," said the Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson.

"The health and integrity of human life, the extent to which we are able to look after people on the margins of our society - in the end they are critical measures of Australia."

Source:Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 2008

(emphasis DH's)

A Paradox?

In the words of DH's satirical inspirations, Gilbert and Sullivan

A paradox, a paradox
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

It's no mysterious paradox, Brendan.

It's 10 years of policy neglect of housing by a mendacious Howard Government whose chief interest was to impose its hateful ideological preoccupations on a gullible public.

As for the second sentence in this miserable revision of a history of abuse directed by your government at all the marginal members of society, it is simply disgusting cant.

As an educated medico with a left wing background, you couldn't have claimed the excuse of ignorance, so you are doubly implicated by your complicity with the pack of knaves that the Australian people finally dispatched.

You should be ashamed of yourself!

We know it's hard to say "sorry".
So start practising with an apology for something that you are unequivocally responsible for:

the housing misery of the non-homeowners of this country.

Pulling the Woolworths over our eyes

It's no secret that housos in Balmain are slaves of Woolworths, either as casual workers or shoppers. Without cars to transport our shopping we're a captive market to a store which, according to locals, capitalises on its relative isolation by charging outrageous prices. While DH doesn't know if this is true or not, as she doesnt have the car to zip around Sydney's malls to compare prices, even if it isn't, the place is a thorn in everyone's side. And that's simply for being an eyesore, a blot on a historic landscape by a company that makes huge profits from the local area, and feels no obligation to fit in. This is not helped by Leichhardt Council's pitiful attempt at civic landscaping in the forecourt (Photo following and see below).

Now DH swears that she has never in her life listened to Alan Jones until this week, preferring Auntie for her breakfast shot of political spleen. But maybe she should listen more often.

Woolworths: Unfair Trade Practises and Irresponsible Alcohol Service

Jones has been doing a very worthwhile number on Woolworths: yesterday exposing its pricecutting/ transfer pricing tricks to squeeze out local businesses, and today, revealed that in Moree, while the local pubs conform to a code of responsible alcohol service in an attempt to reduce the devastation of alcoholism, particularly amongst the Aboriginals in the area, Woolworths refuses to come to the party. No excuses given with profit the obvious motive. Woolworths begins selling alcohol at 7am in the morning to the local desperates.

And what's more astonishing, Woolworths owns nearly 300 pubs in Australia, and its gaming profits last year were $1 billion! Better check the figure folks, it seems astounding,

While DH is not yet about to embrace Alan Jones, and suspects he's either in the pay of Coles or the Hotel Industry Lobby, she reckons she's going to do her best to do her shopping elsewhere. DH actually recalls the golden 70's in Balmain, where she lived for 5 years and did all her shopping, along with the rest of the suburb, at the local greengrocers. She only set foot in Woolworths once or twice in that whole time. No one she knew would have been caught dead in it! How times change, and especially when you're poor. No avoiding a mutual pernicious relationship with the chainstores.

Leichhardt Council should focus on infrastructure not fringe groups

Talking about the tragic appearance of the Woolworths Forecourt, the Village Voice recently compared Marrickville, Leichhardt and Canada Bay Councils' attitude to getting involved in global issues. The last time DH was in Concord, she was envious and knocked out by what a great buzz the new Concord Village had acquired in the years since she was last there. Why can't we have that in Balmain, whose grubby, spotty pavements, general air of disrepair, and neglect are getting truly depressing.

DH couldn't help drawing the conclusion that there was an inverse relationship between the cleanliness of a municipalities pavements and the degree of Councils involvement in global politics.

DH has no objection to Leichhardt involving itself in a truly popular political cause that is clearly supported by the overwhelming majority of the community. But the council has thrown way too much time, and therefore money, away, at the behest of the "Friends of Hebron", a fringe group that is not even located in the area, time that would have been better spent on organising a cleanup of the streets. And let's not even mention the worst of the lot for pavements and political meddling, Marrickville.

St Heath Ledger: Patron Saint of Workers Martyred by the Clock?

While we do not know what the facts are around Heath Ledger's death, we do know that he died surrounded by prescription drugs, and that he was taking them to manage insomnia and anxiety caused by the inflexible demands of his job.

The fact is that for all the glory, kudos, and high pay, Heath Ledger was just another worker who had to be drugged to keep up the regular output that "the shareholders" demand.

Since it's past midnight, DH, an insomniac herself, has no time to summarise the argument that Capitalism is powered by the invention of linear time, the control of the clock, and the theft of workers's time.

But, just guessing: Heath Ledger had, like many (most?) creatives, irregular biorhythms. Perhaps like many (most?) creatives, his prodigious talents relied on mood swings, the bars of excellence are so high that we must borrow prodigiously from future exhaustion to achieve todays heights.

But when the corporation demanded its due, Heath Ledger faced the same choice as all of us. Regulate your biorhythms to fit the needs of Moloch, or go on the Disability Pension. (should the money run out, or the millions be invested in the wrong shares)

Perhaps the prospect of living on $250 a week didn't appeal to him? Perhaps he didn't wish to be scrutinised fortnightly to see if he was "really" disabled, or just faking it to live a life of luxury and ease at the taxpayer's expense.


What's in a Name?


Heath: as in the Bronte's or Shakespeare's Heath, the place of wild untamed dangerous creative forces, the place where madness lay, but also the unenclosed commons.

"This was not 'no-man's land', but was populated by many small-holders, subsistence farmers and masterless men and women, 'living out of sight and out of slavery' (according to Winstanley, the anti-slavery campaigner). The commons was ... [a place where] the people's ideas (not ideas in the mind, but ideas that shaped daily life) of what work is and what a worker is, of the relation between work and need, work and nature, work and time, were also obstacles to the establishment of a money economy."

C Douglas Lummis, Enclosing Time, New Internationalist Mar 2003)

Ledger: a blank page on which profit and loss statements are written.

What's in a name? What tensions lay coiled in that juxtaposition

Just the tensions we all face...

Wild Heath, Yorkshire,
marginalised by the Enclosure Acts

.... and the Ledger that recorded it all ..

And so to bed, for what dreams may come, and besides, tomorrow, Centrelink waits for no man...

Australia's shame: State's abusive neglect of children of prisoners, offenders and alleged offenders.

DH is just listening to Radio National's Law Report as she types.

She is GOBSMACKED by what she is hearing!

Young children abandoned in the house alone while a sole parent is hauled off from the front yard by police. In the worst cases, the police not even allowing the parent to tell the child, who is left to find out by their own devices! Children left in the homes of god knows who, sometimes in the care of neighbours not even known to the family, in other, with their parent's drug addicted associates. Young children not even at puberty left alone to care for toddler siblings! Young teens left to fend for themselves in the streets. And no services who know or care.

How shameful and horrifying to think these poor darlings are simply abandoned, humiliated, shocked, and traumatised for life.

"Innocent until proven guilty" may apply to the offending parent

But for the children, it is "Scarred for life: Punished whether Mum and Dad turn out to be guilty or not"

How is it possible that in a modern state, there are no protocols in place for dealing with the children of people caught up in the criminal justice system!!!??

How is it possible that there have never been any crusading exposes in the media of this national scandal?

Not to mention the guilt she suddenly feels about neighbour's kids. Could she have done more?

It has often been remarked that society has a two faced attitude to children. On the one hand, holy innocents. On the other, savages. Now we see that in the eyes of the state, there is a third view: Unrepresented no-count swill.

Some attitude to our national treasure, society's future!

Howard's evil decrees: Another one bites the dust

Centrelink was ordered last month to cease stopping welfare payments while it investigated claims of people failing to meet their requirements

Our Kevin who art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name
For thou has delivered us from Evil
Our mighty Rudd, thou hath smote them
And dashed them in pieces
And hopefully thou shalt afflict them sorely with taxes
And send auditors over them

Thy will be done, in NSW Labor as it is in Canberra

Give us next fortnight our fortnightly benefit
And forgive us our failures of participation
As we forgive those who bungled our rightful claims
But lead us not into inflation, (if thou canst manage it)
For thine is the Mandate
The Power and the Glory
For ever and ever,

Amen

Daily Telegraph cons the public, incites hatred

The unvarnished facts gleaned from the Daily Telegraph You Pay: Tenants Rorting Public Housing are:

No. of tenants understating their income

by more than $80,000 = 1
by more than $1,000 = 11 (excluding the high flier above)
by between $500 and $1000 = 86
by less than $500 = 939

GRAND TOTAL = 1,037

No of tenants NOT understating their income:
(Approximate no of Social Housing tenants in NSW is 150,00)

= 150,000 - 1,037
= 148,963 (approx)

No. of tenants the Telegraph would like you to think are rorting the system:
Oh, most of them probably, if you look hard enough.

Exercises:

1. Compare and contrast with level of fraud perpetrated by other sectors of society, with special attention to corporate sector


2. Multiple Choice:
   (Choose as many as you like)
   What is the purpose of this article?

To stir up hatred and sell papers




To soften up the public to accept the first round of evictions on shorten term leases (assuming a lead time of 1 year)




To give a balanced report on the the policy black hole around housing affordability under the Howard Government's watch




To comfort the 70,000 unfortunates languishing on the housing waiting lists and encourage them to believe that problems would be speedily resolved if a few rorters were caught




To divide and rule the lower classes (and sell more papers)




Most of the above...

Ans: Your guess is as good as DH's

Check out the Tele's readers comments on the article. You will find that it has, pouring out of the woodwork, the usual suspects: Axegrinders, outraged taxpayers, and unfortunate naifs on the waiting lists who imagine that their misery would end simply by the elimination of the few thousand rorters. And of course, it's a great opportunity to incite the rednecks who are quite certain its all done by "New Australians". Race riots are always good sellers.

But DH must be honest:

Are there rorters in public housing?
Yes
Are there petty crims and drug dealers in public housing?
Yes.
Are there major crims and drug lords in public housing?
You gotta be joking! They live in the best suburbs of crse.
Are there more than were caught?
Yes
Does the Dept know of some of them?
Yes, because their neighbours are always reporting them.
Why does the Dept do nothing?
Just guessing about what goes on in the DOH black box, but local offices appear to be so understaffed and demoralised that they can't even organise basic non-emergency repairs, let alone evictions.
Why doesn't the NSW ALP do something about it?
Good question.
When will a wealthy country like Australia start putting in $$$ to ensure that all its citizens are housed adequately?
As soon as the Daily Telegraph gets a sense of social responsibility and stops inciting class hatred and downward envy.

And finally, whoever it was who earns more than $100,000. Obviously, they qualify for public housing purely on the grounds of mental illness. Why else would they stay?

Daily Telegraph wedges tenants, disses DOH

Despite apparently failing to dig up either a houso who would deign to talk to them, or a resentful houso-in-waiting to exploit, the Daily Telegraph went ahead and published their nasty piece of work "You pay: Tenants rorting public housing"

DH believes in freedom of information and has no issues with the Telegraph publicising the fact that 1037 people underestimated their income in order to live a life of luxury and excess at the taxpayer's expense.

But what a slant! The article manages to create a swatch of new realities for a "Brave New Australia": Analysing the subtext we read

• People who earn more than circa $1200* a week have no right to security of tenure
• A wealthy country like Australia has no duty to house anyone who earns more than $1200
• The long waiting lists for public housing are the fault of tenants, not poor policy.
• DoH are wimps for not ejecting everyone who earns more than $1200 straight out into the street and the welcoming arms of the biggest affordable housing crisis this country has ever known.

Now DH likes to have a go at DoH from time to time. That's her brief. She does it because she believes democracy thrives on no-bull plain English free speech.

But for all its faults it's still our DoH and the best landlord in NSW***. DoH is full of great, dedicated people with a commitment to the human right to shelter, doing their best with limited funding, impossible staffing conundrums, and a series of dud ministers. ***

DH's blood is BOILING about this article but it's New Year's Day
and she has a life and a family and is not going to spend another minute

jousting with craven hacks.
But tomorrow, she will demolish the argument point by point.
Watch this space.

* Figure varies with number of people in household
* DH has paid market rent on occasion herself. After market rent, HECS, Austudy, prescriptions, and public transport costs, she was not that much better off than she had been on the carer,s pension. She will recalculate the exact figure by current stands soon. It wd be of the order of abt $150 a week.
*Make that arguably the best landlord, not necessarily the most responsive
* DH excludes Matt Brown, who she hears is a decent fellow, so she is giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the fact that his one notable utterance was the surprising statement for a Labor fella that "housing is a privilege, not a right". But perhaps we can blame the sensationalist press for that.

Daily Telegraph planning Houso Beat-up?

DH has just had advance notice that the Daily Telegraph is planning a beat-up on housos for New Year's Day.

She just got a breathless call from Telegraph reporter David Barrett, a young man in a hurry. Apologising for the short notice, he wanted to enlist her aid in a proposed panegyric on houso "fraudsters" who are to be blamed for the long waiting lists for public housing. No obvious mention of government policy failure was foreshadowed.

No doubt there are fraudsters out there (ye shall know them by the BMWs parked ostentatiously in the lean-to, if our late unlamented Housing Minister, and examplar of the modest lifestyle, Joe Tripodi, is to be believed). But it's nothing like the con perpetrated on the Aussie public by the Howard Government which ripped $3 billion dollars out of public housing and put it into the pockets of private landlords to no useful effect. What young David wanted was for DH to put him, pronto, onto any poor homeless sods languishing on the waiting list. DH was about to give David a piece of her mind on how she was not about to abet the Daily Telegraph's despicable policy of sooling the plebs onto each other to sell more papers, and perhaps even suggest he might like to do an indepth piece on housing policy, instead. But the poor little thing hurriedly apologised and hung up. DH indulged herself in the distinctly pleasurable reflection that the lad was probably getting the bum's rush all over Sydney from wised-up housos who were not about to be divided and ruled. So if the piece fails to materialise tomorrow, you'll know why.

PS: ... Not to put too paranoid a spin on it, but when is the first round of evictions of short-term leased tenants due? ... and what's the lead-time for softening up the public to accept it?

DOH's Christmas Gift. Don't blink or you'll miss it.

DH hears on the grapevine that tenant activists are somewhat cynical about DOH's new EcoWise and Community Development Resourcing Grants 2007/ 08

Announced in mid December, and with a closing date at the end of January, just when no tenant groups are active, it's down to individual local heroes with nothing better to do over the Christmas holidays than to sweat over a grant submission. And demonstrate that their project will "promote community awareness and skills development and can demonstrate through practical examples innovative ways to increase environmental sustainability within social housing communities". As the song says,

Dashing to the post, on EOI closing day
O what fun it is to write an expression of interest demonstrating that your project meets the following selection criteria, and its goals, objectives and KPIs *

*(not to mention either incorporate as an organisation, or find one to
sponsor you. If one is open over Christmas of course).

The usual tenant suspects who care about these things have been heard to wonder aloud whether DOH is hoping nobody noticed.

Still keen to do something for your community between now and the 31st?

On your laptops, Get ready, Steady. Go!

See the full list of criteria and the application form

Oh and dont forget to have ready the following snippets of information (p4 of 5)

Please attach the following documentation to your application:

photocopies of 3 written quotes for the purchase of any equipment costing $1000 or more

photocopies of insurance quotes

a photocopy of incorporation certificate

a copy of the most recent audited statement for 12 months of your group (or your sponsor, where relevant) showing income, including all sources of funding, and expenditure

the current constitution or articles of association of your group or sponsor

the most recent annual report, or the chairperson’s and treasurer’s reports from the last annual general meeting of your organisation or your sponsor. (Note: if the applicant is an unincorporated group but has an annual report or reports from its last annual general meeting, these should also be attached.)

a letter of authorisation regarding financial or in-kind contributions that will be made to the project by the applicant or sponsor

any other information to support your application.

Selection Criteria
Selection for Eco-Wise Community grants is a statewide, merit-based process. Eligible applications will be assessed by an Assessment Panel against the following selection criteria:
• Consistency with program aims and objectives: demonstrated alignment of project outcomes with the aims and objectives of the Eco-Wise Community Grants pilot, clear explanation of how the project addresses one or more of the program objectives.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver the project to a high standard: sound project planning and methodology, access to appropriate expertise in relevant field, demonstrated project management skills and experience of working in the housing sector and with social housing mmunities.
• Efficiency and effectiveness: stated outcomes are measurable, both qualitatively and quantitatively, extent of participation by social housing residents and other key stakeholder groups, demonstrated assessment of risk factors and identification of risk management approach, inclusion of realistic and achievable objectives and deliverables.
• Value for money: Extent to which the budget is viable for the project, sustainable outcomes of the project relative to the amount of funding sought.

We wish you a NARI Xmas and a HASI New Year

And may the Federal Labor's National Affordable Rental Incentive* and DOH's Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative, be speedily implemented and bring salvation and peace to suffering tenants throughout the land.

* Ok, so it turns out they call it NRAS (National Rental Affordability Scheme) not NARI. What do we care as long as it happens anytime soon?

Brother Kevin, for God's sake, consider the lilies...

Dear Brother Kevin,

DH has had to speak to you about this before, when you endorsed Howard's tough Welfare to Workhouse rules for the disabled. Which you announced, incredibly, the day after the Christmas holiday, 27th Dec 2006!

Let DH remind you of Christ's words, and God knows, she's an atheist, so this should really not be necessary.

Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do the spin, but Solomon, in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew, 6:28)

Do you think Jesus might have been saying something about respecting each human's true nature, and allowing creation to take care of itself, without necessary flogging each creature to death to increase their production of beauty?

And didn't God also admonish us to

Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy

Don't work your Ministers too hard,

Lest they become taskmasters over us all

The idea, Brother Kevin, was to lead Australia out of bondage, and free us from Howard's cruel Welfare-to-Workhouse taskmasters, not to lead us into bondage.

The idea of a Labor party, was not to make workers labour more. It was to make their labours easier.

So take a moment to breathe deeply, and notice that progressives and humanists have won the election. There is no need to kowtow to the most punitive and retrograde elements of society!

Now please make sure our MP's and Ministers get adequate rest over Christmas, and set an example to all of us.

Read DH's Christmas 2006 Message to Brother Kevin

Tanya Plibersek, Federal Housing Minister

Congratulations to DH's local member Tanya Plibersek, for her selection to the Ministry.

Tanya is a dream politician: highly intelligent, balanced, sensible and competent, an excellent communicator, hardworking and conscientious, utterly reliable, approachable, friendly, unpretentious, and importantly truly compassionate and devoted to social justice.

She is a star in what has to be the strongest Ministerial team this country has ever seen. What an extraordinary array of talent, and how good to see the factions swept away and unable to install their bad apples into key positions.

A whole new world

What extraordinary tectonic shifts in the Australian political scene!

DH has always put her faith in the view that where the people lead, the politicians will follow. The people showed they had risen above responding to the panic buttons that Howard and the Liberal Party had used so successfully in the last century. They have swept aside the ugly polarisation of the last decade, and now we see that the both Labor and Liberals have reconstellated around the middle path. Both parties appear to be moving in a very positive way to dealing with the challenges of the 21st century. The old fogeys of the right are gone with their ancient hatreds and prejudices. The left have been forced to get down off their hobby horses of pure theory and face practical reality.

Just one week, and the hatreds and brown fugg of the Howard era seem like light years away.

It appears that Australia has had a peaceful revolution and it's difficult to imagine the country being hijacked again by extremists in any foreseeable future.

May it ever be thus.

DH's Housing Policy Shopping List

Federal

• Reversing the Howard Government's removal of $3 billion from the public housing system into the pockets of private landlords via inflationary rental subsidies
  
• Following the advice of organisations like Shelter and ACOSS to reduce rental stress across the board and ease the pressure on public housing

State

Keep up the Good Work

• Environment
  DOH has very impressive plans for upgrading old stock and implementing regular maintenance programs, and for building new stock to sustainable standards
  
• Transfer to Community Housing
  Proceeding apace and despite misgivings of old lefties promises to decentralise DOH and provide more flexible and responsive housing options

Local Department of Housing Offices

Omigod!!!!

Only God and Schrodinger know what goes on inside the black box known as your average NSW Department of Housing Local Office. Is there an administrative system in there, or just some kind of cat that, at any given moment, may be alive or dead?

The remaining notes are accordingly speculative only...

So far, the cat must be more or less alive, because everytime the box is pried open (the only way is to complain to your local member), there appears to be some feeble thumping in response but it all soon dies down again ...

• Communications
  
  We can deduce that there is some kind of primitive communications going on in there because rent arrears precipitate an instant response. Sadly, every other form of communication from the outside world is directly funnelled into the Bermuda Triangle, which we now know hovers over DOH Broadway, and is never heard of again. There has to be a better way than post-it notes!
  
  DOH could try keeping tenants in the loop. Should avoid making grand promises like the 20 day maintenance guarantee, as disappointment does tend to set in after the first 6 months. And in official correspondence should attempt to sound less like Miss Dorothea McGillicuddy, DH's old Head Mistress, whose disciplinary style went out with Queen Victoria.
  
• Performance
  Acesss to the league table of maintenance backlogs by local office would be a great step towards accountability. We know DOH has them. What are they doing with them?
  
• Investment in administrative support
  Perhaps it's not Schrodinger's Cat in the Broadway Black Box, but a couple of Schrodinger's Chooks-with-Their-Heads-Chopped-off? The quality of output suggests understaffing and administrative mayhem.
  
• Tenant Participation
  There's a long way to go. For instance, a person not entirely unknown to DH, found herself propelled to the heady heights of representative of all the public housing tenants in a large section of the inner city, without a single soul having voted for her, her neighbours hating her, and noone else so much as ever having sighted her. All because she accidentally sleepwalked into the general election and there was noone else there.
  
• Safety and Security of Tenants
  A political minefield. More on this later.
  

.... that's it for now. More bright ideas following

Why DH has quit F/T work: Spreadsheet of a disincentive

HOW TO EARN MORE FOR 3 DAYS WORK THAN FOR 4

The pincers in action: DOH and Centrelink between them manage to create the mother of all disincentives to work and education.

DH has quit F/T work. It just wasn't worth it. Tired all the time, no money, her daughter is a stranger, she hasn't visited her mother in yonks, the house is a mess, no money for repairs or maintenance, and not even enough money leftover for the all important lattes.

Spreadsheet based on DH's weekly payslips
over the past 6 months, by hours worked.*

The blue line shows DH's net weekly income after rent, for 21 hours work.

As you can see, her net actually gets LOWER with every additional hour worked until she hits 29 hours, or an extra day.

Consider her poor employers, a NSW Govt Department. She made them give her a raise as a matter of pride*, but while the difference between her minimum and maximum gross income is $490 she only ends up with $92 in her pocket

Given that $400 must cover: groceries, private health insurance, prescription meds ($100 a month), rising costs of public transport, gas and electricity, communications costs, more expensive work clothes (the old grey trackies would hardly do), repairs, outings, gifts, memberships, holidays (what holidays???), replacement of white goods (which are now 30 years old)...

Wait, there are more disincentives ...
DH actually pays more rent than she should, ie she pays more than the amounts on the spreadsheet. The amounts shown are what she should be paying. But DOH averages earnings over the past 6 months. As DH's income has been steadily dropping, she doesn't have the energy to go through the rigmarole of filling in the subsidy forms every time her rent drops, since it involves much frenzied faxing between herself, her employment agency, and DOH. She'd rather just pay the extra and have a life ...

... it's not much of an incentive, is it?

* Amounts rounded to nearest integer. Hours rounded to nearest 1/2 hour. DH's family income is augmented by her child's disability pension, which is about $150 a week, and on which about $13 extra rent is charged. DOH deems about $600 to be an average income. Even when DH earns over $1000, she finds she has to get charity help to make ends meet. Still, its better than living in most of Africa, South America, the Middle East, Bangladesh, so mustn't complain too much.

Election's over: Back on your heads!

Before the election, carrying water, hewing wood

After the election, carrying water, hewing wood

(Old Buddhist Saying)

Party's over. Back to reality. In the case of DH and her neighbours, this means

• Having been foolhardy enough to ignore DOH and Centrelink's inbuilt Disincentives to Work and Education by getting a higher education, having more takehome pay for working 21 hours a week than for working 28 (thanks to escalating HECS, SPSS and DOH rent)
  
• Giving up fulltime work because despite earning over a $1000 a week with the above disincentives, plus the additional costs of unsubsidised medication and transport, she is only a few dollars better off than on the pension, while her health suffers from the added stress, the time poverty, the chaotic life of being a carer, trying to keep a household running with no money for repairs or refurbishing.
  
• Looking forward to a summer in a house designed by an idiot. With the house facing west with 70% of the western wall made of glass, no insulation in the roof, no eaves to protect against the sun, windows that open outward at a slight angle and allow no air to circulate so the house cannot cool down, with her daughter's brains frying in the eastern bedroom in the morning, and the main western bedroom unlivable in the afternoon, and the room not cooling till about 5 in the morning. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. No rest in this house over the Christmas break.
  
• DH's entire block of 8 houses put in an application to DOH at the beginning of the year to get some heat relief measures put in place. Despite calling half a dozen times, as is the case with DOH's own Siberia, the Broadway DOH, (see Bermuda triangle over Broadway) messages get lost, never to be seen again. There has been no response so far.
  
• Elsewhere in the more crumbling regions of DH's precinct, elderly residents complain of being terrorised by the increasingly targetted population of mentally ill men, drug addicts and criminals. While DOH and other government departments are having a great time signing of high level agreements on mental health supports and bristle with acronyms HASIs and JGOS come and go while nothing happens on the ground

HellChoices: Epitaph to the Howard Years

If satire is the housing of last resort for the politically homeless, then let us pray that the Labor victory will put Diary of A Desperate Houso out of business.

In the meantime, DH thinks it fitting to resurrect this Lazarus of All Jokes in tribute to the era tha has passed

John Howard goes to hell and is met by the Devil, who says "There are 3 rooms here and you can choose which one you want to spend eternity in".

The Devil takes him to the first room which has the seedy appearance of a government funded dental hospital waiting room. An endless queue of lost souls clutching their jaws and writhing in agony are hopping from foot to foot in front of a door that says "reopening just as soon as hell freezes over". The Devil explains that this room is reserved for Moloch Worshippers who believed that Market Forces would look after the Meek (in the long term).

The Devil takes him to next room, "Mistress Miranda DeVine's Dungeon", where abject souls are being made to drink Lattes till their eyes pop out of their heads under the merciless tongue lashing of the hell kitten herself, all the whiles listening to a droning commentary from a quivering mass of ectoplasm going under the name of Gerard Henderson.

Finally the Devil ushers him into a third room and while it's true that everyone appears to be up to their knees in dreck, nevertheless they're all standing around quite sociably, drinking cups of tea and chatting.John Howards chuckles to himself, "Well, this is not too bad considering the swifties I pulled on the the mug battlers. I reckon I can handle this". So he helps himself to a cuppa and an iced vovo and prepares to meet and greet.

Just as he is about to take a sip, the loudspeaker suddenly blares. "A special announcement. The management would like to extend an especially warm welcome to former Australian PM, John Howard, the inspiration for our new industrial relations policy, Hellchoices. We are sure that he has made the right choice in accepting our offer of an iced vovo as a tradeoff on his annual teabreak.

OK punters, time's up. Everybody back on your heads!"

The Most Desperate Houso of All facing eviction

May it come to pass

Union or Billionaires Row. Which one will you join, come the election result?

Paul Sheehan, of the SMH, whose major impact on DH;s life to date was getting her to spend several $100 hard-earned on Silly Water (how could one of the the SMH's most senior journalists be wrong about this miracle panacea for all ills??*) read with interest his ominous article in today's SMH.

In purple prose reminiscent of the words of the fascist poet T.S. Eliot. "What slow beast lurches towards Bethlehem?" he reckons that there's no real difference between the parties, that the election is really about Union Power, and ends his rant with the following.

"Everything is in place. With Labor so close to the holy grail of power - every government in Australia - the machine, and the Labor left, are maintaining an iron discipline, and a patient silence"

Before voting, working punters should ask themselves "If I'm unhappy with the election result, and want to change things, which am I more likely to be able to join and influence: My Union, or the Billionaires Club?"

And vote accordingly.

*And how come the SMH still hires someone who has so little credibility?.

Meet the National Aspirationalist Candidate for the Seat of Sydney

At a "Meet the Candidates" held recently in Sydney, the Liberal Candidate, (her name was as memorable as the list of platitudes she read from) enthusiastically endorsed her party's new rebadging as the party of "National Aspirationalism".

DH has long suspected that this policy arises from a simple typographical error perpetrated by some Liberal Party staffer, steeped in that party's noble tradition of knowing as little as possible about history in case it turns out to be upsetting. Perhaps, having been told to research Globalisation, our staffer accidentally researching Goebbalisation instead, and couldn't tell the difference.

To check her hunch, DH asked Miss Liberal afterwards whether "National Aspirationalism" meant things like "Strength through Joy" and "Hard Work gives us Free Choice"*, to which the candidate enthusiastically agreed.

Sigh.

OTOH, if the Liberals threw in a free Mateswagen Beetle for every battler, and promised to get the trains and buses running on time, it could be a goer!

Translation: Relax...
Strength Through Joy

* Historical Notes

Work'Choices' gone Feral

• Kraft Durch Freude - Nazi campaign to build the National Will via cheap holidays. Included a savings plan towards the KDF Wagen, later rebadged as the Volkswagen
  
• Arbeit Macht Frei: WorkChoices gone Feral. Emblazoned on the main gates of the Auschwitz, it translates roughly as "Work will set us Free". It didn't then. It won't now. Australia is already the hardest working nation in the world. Calculate the social costs for yourselves.

Asperger's and the Mother of all Disincentives to Work, Education and Having a Life

DH strung out trying to survive as parent of young adult with Asperger's

Thanks to the interplay of the irrational policies of Centrelink and DOH, DH is staring down the barrel of unemployment again with maximum nuisance not only to herself but to her employers.

To get a grip on this saga of policy folly, you need to understand that DH is the parent of a young adult with Asperger Syndrome, aka Autistic Spectrum "Disorder", or AS. AS can be thought of as primarily a disorder of social communication. It is neither a physical or intellectual disability, nor a mental illness, though for people with AS, depression and anxiety go hand in hand with the strains of being "odd people out" in a demanding world that doesn't understand their limitations. Parents of people with AS are carers by virtue of the constant psychological strain of dealing with their demanding, "loner" offspring, of advocating for them, of constantly being on call to troubleshoot from cradle to ... well, the totally inadequate Disability Support Pension. While both Labor and the Libs now recognise AS and are beginning to fund support programs for children, the first wave of AS children (AS was only recognised by the medical profession in the late 80's) are now in their early twenties. They need a lot of specialised support in employment, education and housing, but so far this is barely on governmental radar.

But in the meantime, parents of AS children are having a hard time being recognised as carers for the purposes of Centrelink. AS people do not need constant supervision, they love being alone!, and they don't need personal care, (if you don't mind being totally embarassed in public in the company of a normal, often very good-looking young adult who lacks the co-ordination to brush their teeth or their hair properly). The only trouble is that while they may love being alone, aloneness is detrimental to their wellbeing, they actually need social interaction same as anyone else, and thus their parents are carers by virtue of needing to be their sole friends, by needing to constantly be on hand to fight fires, to explain odd behaviours, to deal with official business, to explain a bewildering world,

Thus it was that DH gave up trying to stay on the Carer's Pension, which prohibited her from working more than 15 hours, (and GET THIS! that 15 hours included travel time), while not giving her enough money to live on. NEvertheless, it was an important safety net for herself and child, allowing her reduced taxation, subsidised medication and transport costs.

However, she was then put on Newstart, and 'assessed' (nice way to talk about a human being BTW. In DH's youth, the only thing that got assessed was an insurance claim). Anyhow, she was assessed as being capable of 30 hours work and forced to find it. How many jobs are there that employ someone for 30 hours??? In short, DH was forced to find fulltime work, despite the extraordinary strains she lives under as an unrecognised carer.

So now we see that with fulltime work,

• no concessions on medications or transport,
• DOH throwing her straight into rental stress by dropping her in the deep end at 30% of her gross wages (despite the fact that she never sees 10% of that as it goes to HECS, HELP, SPSS (Educational Supplement)

not only is DH only a few dollars a week better off than on the disgracefully, miserably low Carers Pension, but her employers are suffering as well.

With the constant stress, DH;s immune system is up the creek. She has been coughing her lungs out for several months, and if this blog was an Opera, she'd be singing her final deathbed aria by the end of this post. Not only that, her life is a constant round of visits to psychiatrists, councillors, employment agencies, social workers on behalf of her daughter. She only averages about 3-4 days a week. She is constantly tired, the work is not getting done. Being a responsible worker, she feels constantly guilty, she is stressed out constantly by the decision of whether to take a day off and lose pay (she's on an hourly rate, no holiday pay, sick pay).

DH, like many of her friends who are educated, working sole parents or carers, and live in public housing are finding it almost impossible to make ends meet.

No joke, folks.

Carer's Week is over, and this is still not a life.

"Public Housing not a Right" says Labor (!) Minister

Responding to the news that the Islamic Council has been caught placing cronies in community housing, rather than refugees, Housing Minister Matt Brown apparently ended an otherwise sensible press release detailing plans to stop the rort, with State Labor's new mantra:

"Social housing is a privilege not a right."*

Source: COMMUNITY HOUSING BEING
USED FOR FRIENDS NOT REFUGEES
Friday, 02 November, 2007
By Edwina Bartholomew

as relayed by National TSN (see below)

While the majority of voters in this country are desperate to see Howard and Co thrown out, comments like the above from the new generation of rightwing Labor careerists, who seem to be totally ignorant of Labor history, are not making it easy for Labor supporter to keep it together.

One effect of the long election year is that the ALP left are sitting on their hands, zipping their mouths, and barely holding back the torrent of reckoning that will come to this bunch of big-talking amateurs running the state, (who, DH is sure, are at this moment, quivering in their white shoes at the thought of the challenge from the handful of relics of the sixties who still hang on in their ineffectual branches)

Proving again why he is Public Houso No 1, Garry Mallard, PBIC (Pooh-bah in Chief) of the National Tenant Support Network comments:

Comment from Garry Mallard:

Yes folks, the Minister has uttered the magic sentence. Took longer than expected, sure, but there it is above, NSW Labor's official mantra for all social housing occasions - "Social housing is a privilege, not a right".

Carl Scully said it first, betraying the depth of his ignorance.

Jo Tripody followed Scully. He said it often and in that way that is peculiar to arrogant bullies.

Cherie Burton she said it too... but then, it is said she sought the assistance of an American television medium to contact her dead grandfather to see if he could recommend a good date for the Minister and her partner to marry (Daily Telegraph). Speaks volumes, doesn't it!

Now Matthew Brown has said it, and as the word spreads across NSW, our sector heaves a collective sigh that is shorthand for, "The honeymoon is over. Here we go again!"

The human right to housing is explicitly set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and other international human rights treaties and Declarations.

The Human Right to Adequate Housing guarantees all people the right to live in security, peace and dignity. It involves more than the right to access to shelter and includes the following indivisible, interdependent and interrelated human rights:

• The human right to adequate shelter.
  
• The human right to an adequate standard of living.
  
• The human right to access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
  
• The human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
  
• The human right to a safe and healthy environment.
  
• The human right of the child to an environment appropriate for physical and mental development.
  
• The human right to access to resources, including energy for cooking, heating, and lighting.
  
• The human right of access to basic services, schools, transportation and employment options.
  
• The human right to affordability in housing so that other basic needs are not threatened or compromised.
  
• The human right to freedom from discrimination in access to housing and related services based on sex, race, or any other status.
  
• The human right to choose one's residence, to determine where and how to live and to freedom of movement.
  
• The human right to freedom from arbitrary interference with one's privacy, family or home.
  
• The human right to security, including legal security of tenure.
  
• The human right to protection from forced evictions and the destruction or demolition of one's home including in situations of military occupation, international and civil armed conflict, establishment and construction of alien settlements, population transfer, and development projects.
  
• The human right to equal protection of the law and judicial remedies for the redress of violations of the human right to adequate housing.

Oh well, maybe we'll do better next time....or the time after, or.....?

Garry Mallard

Coordinator

The National TSN

TSN@thenexus.org.au

TSN Bulletins ©The National Tenant Support Network

Public housing tenants at risk of losing home under re-elected Howard government

Highlights of a press release from DH's favorite politician: Tanya Plibersek, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Women and Youth

Australians living in public housing will be at risk of losing their homes if the Howard government is re-elected. Minister Mal Brough plans to tender out existing public housing dollars to the private sector. There are more than 300,000 families who live in public housing across Australia – all whose residency will be at risk if the Coalition is re-elected. Labor supports private sector involvement in affordable housing initiatives but not at the expense of existing public housing funding.

Without Commonwealth investment in the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement States will be forced to cannibalise their stock.

The States and territories have made substantial efforts to maintain or increase their public housing stock - including hundreds of millions of dollars recently committed by Victoria, Queensland and NSW in particular.

In contrast, the Howard Government has ripped $3 billion out of public housing over the last decade in the last three CSHAs.

Under Mal Brough's plan, States may be forced to sell off a portion of public housing stock in order to maintain the rest. With housing affordability at record lows it is more important than ever to maintain a strong housing safety net for the most disadvantaged Australians. With vacancy rates plummeting and rents projected to increase on average by 28 per cent across the country by the end of the decade, more Australians are at risk of becoming homeless.

Only Labor has put forward serious solutions to address the housing affordability crisis.

Labor has committed to investing $600 million in a National Rental Affordability Scheme to stimulate the construction of up to 50,000 new affordable rental properties across Australia, for rent to low-income households at 20 per cent below market rates.

A Rudd Labor government will also protect existing public housing funding levels when it replaces the CSHA with a National Affordable Housing Agreement in July 2008 and work with the states and territories to boost the supply of public, community and crisis housing.

A One Way Street called "Mutual Obligation"

What a disgusting sham!

While the poor are monitored, goaded, and shamed for a pittance, the government fails in its obligation to provide a livable income support payment, not to mention affordable housing, decent health care, and all the rest of it.

While the onus is on individuals to account for their every movement, to to educated in their entitlement, there is no onus on government to pr