I heard a women by the name of Stephanie, a single mother on welfare on ABC 720am Perth this morning. Her complaint was that she was being screwed over by the Government because she is being forced to find 15 hours of paid work. Stephanie is a single mother with 3 teenage children who apparently volunteers and worse still (and god forbid) has an aged parent in a nursing home. The indignation from Stephanie was so thick you could carve it; Stephanie believes that its her god given right to stay at home and continue to receive welfare, and that she is (I kid you not on this) “too busy” to take a paid job.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all sit at home and raise our kids on welfare! Note we aren’t talking about a mother with a young child looking after their kids here who perhaps in dire circumstances deserves government, Stephanie’s kids are all at school and she has plenty of time to volunteer.
Here’s my issue: she who must be obeyed and I work full time to put meals on our table. We pay taxes, and although things are going well now they haven’t always been. We’ve struggled in the past, but we’ve always worked hard to improve our lot. Why should I pay taxes for some woman in Perth to not work when she is fully capable of working?
And then there is the ABC.
Geoff Hutchison gave Stephanie the complete soft treatment. Some goose from Centrelink came on to provide the counter argument and totally stuffed it up with Government new speak that never got close to the issue. The show then read out email after email favoring Stephanie, and talk back callers were the same, little to no counter argument was presented. Interestingly it warped into some sort of discussion about the Government not valuing volunteering, Stephanies only real claim to fame. Here’s the thing: volunteering is giving your own time when you are able, after work if you of a working age. This was my email to the show, that unless I missed it was never read out (note that it was in bite sized chunks on purpose to suit the medium)
Geoff
I?m appalled at your soft treatment of Stephanie. No one likes working, but we all have to do it. We shouldn?t have to pay taxes to sustain Stephanies lifestyle choice. If she is capable of doing volunteer work then she is capable of doing paid work. My wife and I both work, we don?t get a cent from the government; the hand out mentality of people like Stephanie sickens me. My only message to Stephanie: get a job and stop expecting the taxpayer to support you, life?s hard in the real world; get use to it, the rest of us have.
It will probably never see the light of day on the ABC. I’ve always known from my Government days that the ABC is biased, but locally I’ve never really seen it before. The one sided support of Stephanie in her anti-Government rant (and most of it was how the Government was out to get her) seems to prove that at least in Western Australia the ABC has no interest at all in being anything other than biased against the Federal Government. I’d switch to 882 6PR but simply we don’t get the coverage in the Bunbury area and there are no decent local alternatives. In future I might just stick to ABC Classic FM or News Radio on the occasions the reception is good enough.
