Learn from the mistakes of others

apparently adults who find they need assistance from our government automatically waive their right to make decisions for themselves.

if you're on a 'benefit'[0], you have to wait for some government employee to tell you what you're allowed to do, and not allowed to do. and when. and fill in this form please ... or we can't do anything to 'help' you ...

politicians babble on about 'getting people off welfare dependence' - as if welfare were some kind of drug. at the same time, they increase the range of decisions that 'welfare' agencies are 'required' to make for those who get stuck in the queues at centrelink.

sure i was 'dependent' upon welfare - without it i would not have been able to eat. that's pretty dependent.

now that i have 'gotten myself[1] off'[2] newstart™[3], i have calculated that it will take me around five years to pay off all the debts that i have acquired as a result of the privilege of trying to live in poverty for much of the past decade.

there might be a little less 'dependence' upon welfare if there were more effort put into helping people. the federal government spends millions of dollars tracking down 'welfare cheats' (usually people who've made a few mistakes on forms over the previous five years - count them, five years) and extracting that money from their current payments. who knows what might be achieved if the same enthusiasm was shown for helping the poor bastards in the first place.

[0]	this name just suggests all the wrong things.
[1]	as if anyone at centrelink were ever going to help me.
[2]	i was congratulated the other day by a cheerful centrelink droid when i informed the office that i have a real job now, "must be good to have gotten off newstart™ so quickly". mangled language aside, i figured seven years wasn't particularly quick. perhaps i'm wrong ...
[3]	even the name of the unemployment 'benefit' is condescendingly commercially wanky.