The Howard/Costello Govt will once again kick the disabled in the guts with their latest budget.
They’ll be spending 17 billion dollars of tax payers money and in all of that the only real mention of the disabled and sick is when they explain how they’re going to spend millions abusing them for being sick, bullying & trying to force them into a work force that has no real place for their disabilities & worsening the effects of their illness. Forget the fact that these people have been classed as disabled for a reason. Forget the fact that for people with chronic MS, Cancer, Osteo-Arthritis, etc this constant and debilitating stress, pressure and harassment means their disease WILL worsen and that their life expectancy WILL shorten, thanks to the Govt’s abusive and inhumane treatment through Centrelink. The people at the bottom of the rungs in society are apparently such an easy target that this “Govt” can’t help but constantly sink the boot in and kick them while they’re down. The only money set aside for the people on disability pensions is money to repeatedly review their payments, harrass them for the same information over and over and threaten stopping their disability pension, hoping they’ll give up and crawl away somewhere to die. Yearly specialist appointments, hard to come by, are used up filling in the same red tape forms with the same information that the Govt (Centrelink) already has instead of addressing people illnesses and it’s effects. This means that chronic illnesses and all their side effects are worsening over time and the proper treatment & operations are being missed entirely due to the time being completely wasted on petty forms & reviews, information that the govt already has.
CHRONIC MEANS IT CANNOT IMPROVE!
CHRONIC MEANS IT IS NOT CURABLE!
CHRONIC MEANS IT WILL EVENTUALLY KILL YOU!
Why, if you already know that, would you continue to make the disabled, sick and dying jump though pointless hoops & treat them like slaves to be pushed around and bullied? Many Centrelink employees say “off the record” that they find this treatment of the disabled to be “personally disgusting & un-australian” and that they try to help as much as possible but are unable to change govt policy. Doctors, Specialists, Medical experts, social workers and professional disability workers through out society have all agreed that this is absoloutely no help to those with disabilities and has the opposite effect, causing more pain and suffering to those already in unimaginable pain & deppression. Entire groups of professionals have lobbied the govt and shown them the offical statistics proving that this method of threat, abuse & harrasment fixes nothing and simply causes more misery & illness, SO WHY DO IT?
Is it to villify them, to scapegoat them, to point and say “they’re just bludgers”. Should we force women in wheelchairs to be prostitutes if they’re able to lie down? Should we make mentally retarded boys & girls clean excrement off public tiolets if they’re able to kneel? Should those dying of cancer beg on the streets for money like in third world countries? It seems that this Govt’s answer is “YES!”.
These abusive actions are part of the Govt’s americana based “Welfare To Work” (Slave For The Dole) system where, instead of spending the money on real training to address our skills shortages, they force the unemployed to do free labour for supposed “non-profit” groups. Any long term research shows that these programs do nothing but destroy real jobs that could be created around the work that’s being done for free and help to push down wages, by companies threatening to bring in the “free labour” that’s available.
The reality is a person on a disabled pension can no more cure themselves than an aged person on a old-age pension can make themselves young again. As one older australian said “At least I had a good innings before I got here, those poor bastards never even got that chance.” This Howard/Costello "Liberal" Govt likes to pat the Carers of the disabled on the head and throw them a few crumbs but their abusive treatment and stress they put these people under makes a Carers job a hundred times harder. Most Carers do it for love, because they love their wife or husband, their mother or father, sister or brother or their child. Every time the Govt kicks these people, they kick us as well, they kick everything we’ve ever done, they destroy the security and “certainty of care” we create for these people. They destroy their self-worth, their self image and their faith in society and themselves and the truth is that more than one suicide has occured directly due to the Howard/Costello Govt’s abusive treatment. What kind of “Leaders” do that? The answer is "The Worst Kind".
What kind of a country have we become?
“You can judge the morals and ethics of a society by how it treats it’s weakest and most vulnerable.”
If this is true then not only has Howard, Costello and the entire “Liberal Party” shown themselves to be morally & ethically bankrupt and disgusting examples of leaders, Labour, if they support it & we who ALLOW IT
will show ourselves to be no better and the term "Australian Values" will be nothing but empty words.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What can we as Aussies & Humans Do? Visit the following links and take action:
Welfare Rights Centre - Publications - http://www.wrcqld.org.au/publications.htm
Welfare Rights Network - http://www.welfarerights.org.au/policy/index.htm
Australian Federation of Disability Organisations - http://www.afdo.org.au/node/122
MS Advocacy - http://www.msaustralia.org.au/advocacy/index.html
Catholic Social Services Australia - http://www.catholicwelfare.com.au/media/2001
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