I won’t resile from speaking up for the poor!

If anyone lives a vulnerable lifestyle today, it’s the poor, isn’t it?

If you’re poor you have to struggle for every cent. You have to wait, queue, walk, starve and as well as that, negotiate a welfare system that was set up in such a way that you need a degree in business administration to navigate it.

You tend to get talked at rather than to and ignored rather than acknowledged. If you’re poor you are always on edge, vulnerable. Never knowing when the ‘benefit’ you get will be cut off.

Labor did it to single mums: Their pension reduced. “Bang” just like that!. Then some callas politician said that they could live on it, as if that sort of statement means anything.

Now, disability Pensions are in the spotlight. That puts the frighteners up all those who are on one.

“Why should it?” you ask. “If it’s genuine there’ll be nothing to fear.”

The answer is that people on disability pensions are just that, disabled. Maybe with mental issues.

That means you have low self-esteem. You live on your nerves. You fear everything. Everything makes your life harder.

Try being disabled and negotiating the welfare system. You’re always in the wrong. You feel the whole system is directed at punishing you. You feel all alone and vulnerable.

And then some pumped up politician implies it’s your fault for being born that way and threatens to take your very life giving benefit away.

I ask you, how would you feel?

Incidentally, in all my experience it’s not the poor we should worried about ripping off the system, it’s the upper-class. Look at the tax benefits, baby bonuses, etc that those who don’t really need it, get?  And we all know the biggest rorters off of Medicare are doctors.

This language might seem a bit strong but it’s heart felt. No one who works with the poor and needy can stand by and watch them used as political footballs. I won’t resile from speaking up for them whenever they need me to.