Privatisation by stealth: The Abbott/Turnbull Government and Centrelink

'What I am basically saying is that welfare must become a good deal for investors, for private investors. We have to make it a good deal for the returns to be there, to attract the level of capital that will be necessary in addition to the significant injection of capital and resources that is already provided by the Commonwealth.'

Treasurer Scott Morrison

 

If 2015 was Centrelinks 'anus horribulus', with complaints up 35 per cent in just two years, and more than 62,000 grievances reported through official government channels in the past financial year, then the next few years are only going to get worse for the beleagured agency and the people who are forced to use its services.

 

The privatisation of Centrelink, long predicted by analysts of the social welfare policies of the Abbott/Turnbull Government and promoted by current Treasurer and former Social Services Minister Scott Morrison, is accelerating, and will only worsen Centrelink's dismal performance and reputation.

In March 2015 Kelly Tranter wrote about Government plans to privatise Centrelink.

 

As Tranter points out, the 2014 report of the Government's National Commission of Audit recommended the Government investigate “options for outsourcing part or all of the Department of Human Services payments system, including Centrelink.  

The report paved the way for the Government’s plan to move towards privatisation of the Department of Human Services including Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support services.
 

Aware of the political risks of the direct privatisation of Centrelink,  the Abbott/Turnbull Government has adopted a strategy of  'privatisation by stealth and increments'.

In September 2015, the Abbott/Turnbull Government and the Department of Human Services sought bids from private sector partners  under its billion-dollar, "once-in-a-generation” welfare systems replacement for the software platform to support a new payments engine.

Outsourcing of Centrelink services is another form of privatisation by stealth.

 

Since 2012 Telstra has run Centrelink's phone services, after it won a 5 year contract to connect  Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support and provide mobile voice, broadband and support services for over several thousand staff across more than 855 sites. Telstra has lost up to $90 million on the deal.

 

The losers in this outsourcing arrangement include callers to Centrelink phone lines, who have seen services grow worse since the deal was signed in 2012, taxpayers who have seen little value from the outsourcing and Telstra's shareholders.
 

A number of Centrelink call centres have been outsourced to corporate operators since 2014 when Telstra took over a number of call centres and there are plans to outsource all call centre operations to Telstra.

Privatisation by stealth also occurs through benign neglect. This occurs when Government runs down and undermines the capacity of  Centrelink to perform its responsibilities, through staff cuts and staff freezes; outsourcing and fragmentation of services to private providers who deliver poorer quality services; constant changes to policy and eligibility requirements; underfunding, funding cuts and restrictions; constant restructuring; failure to address problems and failure to invest in systems, process and technology to meet demand.

The result is poorer quality service, ineffectiveness and the resultant lack of public confidence, which is used as evidence to justify handing over the agency's responsibilities to private sector providers, on the grounds they will deliver services more effectively and cheaper (which is untrue).
 

The extent to which the capacity of Centrelink is being undermined by the Abbott/Turnbull Government to justify privatisation is evident in the range of problems it faces:

• An Auditor-General' report in May 2015  found almost a quarter of the 57 million phone calls made to Centrelink last year went unanswered, and Australians spent 143 years waiting in vain to speak to the agency in 2013-14, before simply hanging up. About 13.7 million calls did not make it  to even the point of being put on hold, after they were blocked or received a "busy signal".

• The Australian National Audit Office’s Management of Smart Centre’s Centrelink Telephone Services Report showed that approximately 40 per cent of all incoming calls result from failed online or self-services and the growth of digital transactions has not reduced demand for call centre services as was anticipated.
• The department was savaged in a midyear National Audit Office report for its customer service performance and ended the year plagued by serious website malfunctions. In November and December, clients suffered through weeks of disruption to the Centrelink websites used by millions of Australians to manage their payments and report their work activities. The agency was forced to apologise after weeks of "intermittent issues" left many clients unable to log onto their account
• A New Year’s Day glitch caused 70,000 people to be told they owed up to $800 to the Government.
• DHS staff wages and conditions have been under attack  The 2014-15 Australian Public Service ‘State of the Service Report’, shows that only 59% of APS staff believe they are paid fairly, down from 67 per cent last year.
• The Minister has failed to respond to Audit Office and Ombudsman reports which note service delivery failures in customer identity protection, call wait times, online and face to face services.
• The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s follow-up review of service delivery complaints at Centrelink has revealed that problems have persisted for more than 18 months after his initial report was published in April 2014.
• Clients are being "shooed away" from Centrelink offices and told to take their problems online, resulting in an avalanche of complaints.
• Frontline staff are facing a 20 per cent increase in instances of customer aggression, blamed by the opposition and unions partly on frustration at the agency's customer service performance.

The Australian Unemployment Union (AUU)- an organisation of the unemployed, for the unemployed that fights for a fair and humane welfare system for all-  argues that  Abbott/Turnbull Government plans to  hand over the responsibility to make income support payments to local service providers, both corporate and NFP providers, instead of Centrelink, is further evidence of the privatisation of Centrelink. 

 

The legislation, to be phased in on July 2016 will initially effect around 2000 unemployed workers. 

The legislation will give job agencies unprecedented and sweeping new powers over the lives of unemployed workers.

 

The AUU currently has a petition** here opposing plans by the Abbott Turnbull Government to privatise Centrelink by handing over to local service providers the responsibility to make income support payments instead of Centrelink.

 

The full text of the AUU petition is below:

In December 2015, the Coalition Government introduced legislation to reform the rural Community Development Program (CDP) "so that local service providers will make income support payments instead of Centrelink". The legislation will be phased in on July 2016 and will at first effect around 2000 unemployed workers.

This is the beginning of what we have all been dreading: placing the functions of Centrelink in private hands, or in other words the privatisation of Centrelink.

Putting the functions of Centrelink into private hands is a recipe for disaster. Byputting a profit motive into the Social Security System, every Australian citizen's right to Social Security is under threat.

In an ominous press release, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion stated “under these reforms, there will be more local decision-making by providers who know the jobseekers and have closer connections to what is going on in communities. Payments will be made weekly so remote jobseekers have immediate access to their money and feel the financial impact of not turning up to activities straight away – not weeks down the track."

Currently, legislation states that the employment services industry is not able to make compliance decisions as these decisions must be made by Centrelink. It appears that this legislation aims to change that, giving job agencies unprecedented and sweeping new powers over the lives of unemployed workers.

Starting the privatisation of Centrelink in the rural Community Development Program is yet another example of the Government using Indigenous Australians as guinea pigs to test its new cruel and unusual policies towards the unemployed.

The Government hopes that if they privatise Centrelink out in the remote areas of the Northern Territory no one will notice. We have noticed and we think it's disgraceful.

An attack on one unemployed worker is an attack on all workers. We must stand in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters before it's too late.

Sign this petition and let the Government know we firmly oppose its attempts to privatise Centrelink.

******************************************************************************

 ** Other petitions by the AUU are here, including one calling for the prosecution of Max Employment over allegations aired on ABC 4 Corners Program in 2015 that Max Employment was involved in systemic rorting, gaming and mistreatment of the unemployed.

 

Four Corners aired allegations that  Max Employment regularly sends unemployed clients into "irrelevant training courses" offered by its training organisation arm, thereby enabling Max Employment to collect two separate payments from the Government and maximising its profit in the process.

 

I have blogged about the unlawful practices of Max Employment here and here.

In Queensland freedom of speech does not apply to some NGOs and civil society

Funny how Liberal National Governments vehemently defend the right to freedom of speech for racists, anti Islamists, climate change deniers and corporations, but not for civil society groups and NGO's who speak out on public policy issues.

Since its election the  Queensland Liberal-National Newman Government has sought to silence NGO's who wish to contribute to political debate. The Government has made it clear that NGOs must remain silent if they wish  to receive public funding. Grant contracts now include clauses preventing non-government organisations advocating for state and federal legislative change.

Stories about the attacks on the free speech rights of NGOs in Queensland are  here, here, here, here and here. 

This latest piece is from the todays Brisbane Times.

Springborg defends 'draconian' gag orders

Queensland's health minister has defended gag orders on not-for-profit groups that receive state funding and has told the federal government to butt out.

The federal government will introduce a new bill which would ban gag clauses from all commonwealth contracts with the not-for-profit sector.

It plans to write to state and territory leaders asking them to match the federal commitment.

Federal Finance Finance Minister Penny Wong has called the Newman government's gag orders "nothing short of draconian".

"First, the Newman government cuts funding to those without a voice and then silences those who speak on their behalf," she said.

But Queensland Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said not-for-profit groups should not be wasting their time and money on political advocacy.

He said the federal government should stop trying to interfere.

"We will decide how public money is spent in Queensland," he said on Monday.

"In Queensland we believe that if we give money in Queensland Health to an organisation, then that organisation should be doing what we fund them for.

"Not running around with political advocacy."

 

Not for profit aged care provider Baptistcare protests Federal Government funding cuts

Always pleasing to see large Not- for- profit organizations like Baptistcare willing to make a stand  and protest against Government policy that disadvantages the people they serve.

This report describes a protest by staff at Baptistcare's Rockingham aged care facility against Federal Government funding decisions in aged care that are resulting in $500 million being cut from aged care funding.

Baptistcare is extending the protest to 13 of its residential aged care facilities and three disability and community care sites from today, in protest at the Federal government's decision

The organisation has taken the step of launching the visual protest, which includes a call to action via social media, to raise greater public awareness of the government's 1 July adjustments to the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI).


The protest is part of  a larger campaign being run by not- for- profit aged care providers through Aged and Community Services WA  which represents not-for-profit aged care providers which care for 100,000 of the state's most frail and vulnerable citizens.

Flags emblazoned with “Government Neglects Aged Care” flew outside the Gracehaven facility protesting reduced federal funds for aged-care organisations to deliver clinical care services to its residents.

Baptistcare CEO Lucy Morris said the Government had made it almost impossible for not-for-profit residential care providers, like Baptistcare, to provide appropriate care for the elderly and vulnerable.

“Through its adjustment of the assessment tool used to fund high-care services, the Government has stripped money from the services needed to care for older, sicker residents, who have more complex health needs and need higher levels of care,” Dr Morris said.

But Mental Health and Ageing Minister Mark Butler said subsidies would not be reduced and they would continue to grow by 2.7 per cent a year above indexation, per resident over the next five years.

He said early data for providers’ care funding claims made in July showed average subsidies increased from $133.96 per resident per day in June to $134.83 in July.

“Leading Aged Services Australia (LASA) and Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) have claimed funding will be cut by hundreds of millions of dollars in 2012 and beyond,” Mr Butler said.

“These claims are clearly untrue, as these early figures show. The Government’s aged care package will increase funding for residential care. This year’s subsidies will be $310 million more than last year.”

ACSA WA chief Stephen Kobelke said WA’s not-for-profit aged care sector had struggled for years to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

“There has been unprecedented stagnation in the provision of aged-care services in WA, to the point that 3368 bed licences have now not been taken up since 2007,” he said.

He said ACSWA figures showed some aged-care providers would face cuts of over $14,000 per resident.

Gerry Georgatos and the power of combining citizen journalism and social justice campaigning

Gerry Georgatos is a West Australian journalist who combines investigative reporting with a powerful commitment  to campaigning on social justice and human rights issues.

Gerry is  a Western Australian based reporter for the National Indigenous Times for whom he writes important stories about Indigenous and social justice issues that few other journalists are willing to cover.

Gerry is also the Principal and Convener of the Human Rights Alliance through which he has initiated  and led groundbreaking social justice campaigns in WA. Gerry is also a Phd researcher  on Aboriginal Deaths in custody.

It is this combination of investigative journalism, social and political research and social justice campaigning that has resulted in Gerry exposing injustices ignored by the mainstream media and politicians, including the illegal imprisonment of Indonesian youths in adult prisons in WA, Police violence inflicted on a young Aboriginal man in Albany and the appalling state of Aboriginal homelessness in the Kimberley region.

As well as the National Indigenous Gerry's articles also appear in many other places including Indy Media, Indy Media Brisbane, Green Left Weekly and the Donnybrook-Bridgetown Mail.

Gerry's article below is about the decision by the UK multinational corporation Serco and the WA Department of Corrective Services to deny Aboriginal prisoners access to prisoner transport to attend family funerals. 

The article will appear in the National Indigenous Times this week. 

Gerry Georgatos on Aboriginal Funeral outrage

The National Indigenous Times has been contacted by two sources during the last couple of weeks, one within the Department of Corrective Services (DCS) Western Australia and another within SERCO, that Aboriginal inmates will no longer be transported to funerals. Instead they may be left with the option of paying their respects to loved ones by either viewing a recorded or where possible live screening of the funeral and the procession while alone in a prison wing room. This has been slammed as inhumane, and culturally inappopriate by most Aboriginal Elders.

Both sources said that this initiative was flagged allegedly due to SERCO's reluctance to transport prisoners to funerals. The multinational which has the contract to much of the State's prisoner transport, and manages Acacia Prison, on the outskirts of Perth, and the lucrative Immigration Detention Centre network Australia-wide, is allegedly reluctant to provide compulsory funeral attendances for Aboriginal inmates - it has been alleged that SERCO management claimed high prison officer risk issues at funerals and also allegedly cost benefit issues. SERCO is one of the world's wealthiest companies.

The National Indigenous Times contacted the DCS, and its spokesperson Brian Cowie said "Gerry, we will have comment for you next week." 

UWA law student and Nyoongar rights activist Marianne Mackay the former chairperson of the Deaths in Custody WA contacted the National Indigenous Times a few days ago to confirm that she had also been advised that an Aboriginal prisoner was refused transport to a funeral last Friday. "This is a first, it doesn't happen that one of our people is not allowed to attend a funeral. Apparently SERCO refused to transport him and this has stunned us considering how everybody knows how important it is for our people to attend funerals. It attacks our cultural integrity."

SERCO is yet to respond to the National Indigenous Times.

Another Nyoongar rights activist, Iva Jackson-Hayward has responded with a call for the State Government to ensure that the DCS and SERCO ensure Aboriginal inmates do not have their cultural rights eroded. "The DCS and SERCO are dutibound to protect the rights of our people. Aboriginal women and men in prison cannot break their customary duty to attend funerals. It's outrageous what is happening, and it's a human rights abuse. This is all about money, and SERCO trying to make more of it by abusing the rights of our people. It is the Government's duty to pull SERCO into line."

Ms Mackay said the Inspector of Custodial Services, Neil Morgan was contacted on Friday.

The WA Prison Officers Union (WAPOU) said the State Government should scrap SERCO's prisoner transport contract. WAPOU Secretary John Welch made this call following another whistleblower's leaking of serious allegations.

The whistleblower said SERCO transported prisoners to wrong prisons, was late in bringing prisoners to their Court appearances, transported seriously ill prisoners in prison vans instead of ambulances. It was only a couple of months ago a prisoner who had open-heart surgery was returned to the prison in a van instead of an ambulance and arrived with serious injuries which the DCS tried to play down however CCTV footage proved otherwise.

All three whistleblowers said SERCO was not turning up to transport Aboriginal prisoners to family funerals, and that SERCO made no effort to account for its failure.

Mr Welch said SERCO's failure to ensure contracted prisoner transports gave rise to stress and tensions in prisons.

"These latest allegations are so serious that the Barnett Government should cancel SERCO's contract and bring these services back for the Department of Corrective Services to run so that we can be confident the community is being kept safe."

Australia has one of the world's worst prison suicide rates, with privately run prisons, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, enduring proportionately more deaths in custody than Government run prisons.

Other serious allegations were made by the whisteblowers to the National Indigenous Times and we will follow these through.

Reclaiming the history of social justice activism

This story of social justice advocacy is a reminder of the ways that the contribution of radical and progressive social justice activists and campaigners is censored by so called "official narratives" and traditional bodies of knowledge.

Ken Giles* is an elementary school music teacher in Washington DC who uses music to teach his students the link between songs and social justice movements. He uses civil rights songs, peace songs and union songs to make the connection between music and movements for social justice and peace.

Giles is spearheading a campaign to have the acclaimed singer, actor, political activist Paul Robeson inluded in the music textbooks used in schools. Decades ago Robeson was censored from most school books because of his political activism and fierce critcism of US treatment of African Americans and US foreign policies.

As Ken Giles points out even though Robeson is experiencing something of a renaissance in the US, it is still difficult to find his recordings and films, and his work and contribution is not included in many school textbooks.

Giles argues that Robeson's exclusion is an example of the censorship that occurs in the educational textbook industry. In his own campaigning Giles is encouraging his students and other professionals to challenge such censorship.

For those of us who believe in and campaign for social and economic justice Ken Giles's actions show that it is important that we reclaim the history and contributions of social movements and individuals who fought for social and economic justice.

*Ken Giles is the music teacher at Shepherd Elementary School in Washington, DC. He teaches violin at the DC Youth Orchestra and sings with the DC Labor Chorus. He is a longtime member of Jewish Peace Fellowship and was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War. You can read about his "150 years of Songs of Freedom and Justice” music history program at the Labor Heritage Foundation.

Victorian Government backdown on Fair pay for communty sector workers: Will the Barnett Government be next?

Once again the not-for-profit sector has been betrayed by a government that made all sorts of promises about the importance of the sector and the need to address the problems of funding shortfalls and low wage.

The newly elected Baillieu Government in Victoria has backed away from a promise made before the election to fund a pay rise for the community sector workforce should it be ordered by Fair Work Australia.

In its submission to Fair Work Australia in relation to the Equal Remuneration Case for Community and Social Sector Workers, the Victorian Baillieu Government warned of possible cuts to jobs and services if it has to fund a large pay rise for the female-dominated workforce.  The Australian Services Union brought the case before Fair Work Australia (FWA), and is seeking a pay rise for community and social sector workers – a workforce which is predominantly female. The case is based on a 2009 Queensland decision to award pay rises to such workers of up to 37 per cent over three years.

The online publication Pro Bono News reports that

....Victoria’s Not for Profit sector has reacted angrily, pointing to the election promise made by the Minister for Women’s Affairs and Community Services Mary Wooldridge to fund the pay rise even it went over the budgeted $200 million over four years.

In its submission to FWA, the Victorian Government says that that contrary to the unions’ submission, it ought not be assumed that all governments have undertaken to fully fund the unions’ claim in the event that it is granted by FWA.

It says the Victorian Government estimates that this year it will provide $1,568 million funding for SACS workers wages.

It says the pay rise sought by the union means the cost to the Victorian government of funding SACS workers will be in the range of between $700 million over 4 years (if an 18% rise is ordered) and $1,700 million over 4 years (if a 37% rise is ordered).

The submission says the Victorian Government’s public commitment of $200 million over 4 years to support the decision by FWA is consistent with their election commitment of responsible management of the State's finances, which includes maintaining an operating surplus of at least $100 million each year without pushing up debt.

The submission says depending upon the extent of any wage increase granted and the prospect that any increase in wages may not be fully funded by the Commonwealth Government, this may mean that there will be a “gap” between the rates of pay prescribed by FWA and the funding of the sector.

It says this gap may result in a reduction in services which in turn may have an impact on the numbers of positions in the sector, and / or on the hours of work available to workers employed in the sector.

The Government submission says evidence provided by Lincoln Hopper from Mission Australia demonstrates that there is a possibility that the claim, if granted in full or in part, will have adverse effects on employment, hours of work and service provision in the SACS sector.

It says Mission Australia employs 1,052 people who would be affected by an equal remuneration order, which would see the organisations salary costs rise by a total of $3.735 million per year, affecting the organisations ability to employ people and resource projects.

In a pre-election interview with VCOSS, CEO Cath Smith just a couple of days out from the 2010 Victorian State Election, Liberal member for Doncaster, Mary Wooldridge said the Liberal Government would fund the pay-rise even if it cost more than the estimated $50 million per year.

In the interview, Wooldridge said the Victorian Coalition fully supported the pay equity case, and would support the decisions of Fair Work Australia and would be passing them through in their funding arrangement.

She said the Victorian Coalition was very clear that they believed this needs to happen and that they would be funding the outcome.

The Australian Services Union says the Baillieu Government backflipped on the election promise in their submission to Fair Work Australia, stating that any unfunded increases would have to be paid for by reducing services and jobs.

ASU Assistant Branch Secretary Lisa Darmanin slammed the recent announcement, saying it is an insult to hard-working, mostly women community workers who the Minister for Community Services Mary Wooldridge promised - on the eve of the state election - that a Coalition government would value their work by funding and supporting the equal pay claim at Fair Work Australia.

Darmanin says the Baillieu Government’s submission is effectively saying that equal pay for these workers needs to be paid for by cutting services to the most disadvantaged in our community, or make those working in it work harder by reducing staff.

VCOSS CEO Cath Smith says she expects the government to honour its pre-election commitments to community sector workers.

With the Victorian State Budget to see an estimated $46 billion in transaction revenue over the next 12 months, Smith says there must be room in the budget to fund this key election promise.

The consequences of social and public policy that transfers the burden of risk and care to families and individuals

Cam McKellar tells a profoundly moving and shocking story about the burdens placed on his mother and family by public policy and social policy driven by economic and market imperatives, bureaucratization and the transfer of risk, responsibility and care to private individuals and families.

My brother has an intellectual disability. He is autistic and he can’t speak. He makes noises and flaps his arms. He’s different and he’s charming. He’s demanding and he needs daily care.

My mother cared for him for most of his life. The sheer intensity of his needs bound them brutally together. 

She feared that if she died, my sister and I would be bound to him in the same way, so everyday she worked to win his independence. 

At first we found small freedoms — a meal without screaming or food flung in frustration; a visit to friends that didn’t end in an apology and a hurried exit; a rare, blissfully uneventful evening out for my mother, a bus ride together, and then years later, miraculously, a ride alone on the bus.
My mother believed in my brother. She loved him and she fought for him. 

If she were alive today she’d still be caring for him and as an aging carer she’d still be ignored by the state and federal government disability services. She’d still be reliant on family and friends to shoulder the burden of care.


She’d be forced by yet another agency to prove and categorise my brother’s disabilities in order to receive the smallest of concessions. She’d be even more exhausted, even more isolated.
She’d be told that in a country debating a super-profits tax, there was not enough public funds available to sustain my brother in community accommodation. 

She’d be turned away because she would continue to cope and would not give up her son.
She’d be turned away because she was not "in crisis". 

As my mother lay dying from cancer, I spent the last precious weeks of her life in furious negotiations with NSW disability services fighting to establish a system of care for my disabled brother.


Last week the Productivity Commission released its draft report into Australia’s disability support services. If the Commission’s recommendations had already been implemented in those precious weeks, our lives could have been so much less desperate. 

As it was, the calamitous reality of NSW’s underfunded disability sector forced me into a terrible dilemma — either abandon my brother to become a ward of the state, or take on his full-time care for the rest of my life. 

This was exactly the same awful predicament my mother faced 30 years ago and spent half her life trying to resolve. It’s the same predicament families and other carers of people with a disability all over Australia face today. 

The Productivity Commission’s draft report confirms that the current disability support system is chronically underfunded. Services are haphazard, inefficient and dependent on irregular state revenues. 

The system is characterised by a siege mentality; carers must literally desert those under their care to receive consistent support. Mindful of state budgets and the intense desperation in the community, workers within the system will only allocate scarce resources to those families or individuals in crisis or where a long-time primary carer has died and there is no one in the family to replace them.

Death of disability advocate and practioner Wolf Wolfensberger

My friend and colleague Erik Leipoldt has written this piece on his blog in memory of the academic and disability advocate Professor Wolf Wolfensberger who died recently. As Erik points Wolfensberger was one of the most influential thinkers and practitioner in the disability field worldwide and his work had a significant effect on the lives of people with disabilities. Wolfensberger's ideas changed  the way professionals, policy makers, governments and service providers think about and respond to people with disabilities.

Erik writes:

"Dr Wolfensberger had a strong commitment to people made vulnerable in a society where individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism reign. He made a huge contribution to people with disabilities. He was a visionary, a devastating analyst and honest critic.

......In 1999, seven major developmental disability organizations in the US proclaimed Dr Wolfensberger one of the 35 parties that had been the most impactful on "mental retardation" worldwide in the 20th century. Dr Wolfensberger's work was also recognised by the US magazine 'Exceptional Parent' as one of the great 7 contributions to the lives of people with disabilities, along with Salk and the polio vaccine, braille, Americans with Disabilities Act and the wheelchair.

.....He was perhaps best known for developing social role valorization theory from his, and Nirje's, concepts of normalisation. Social role valorization has been taught to many using and running disability services, and applied to various degrees, in government policies and service practice.

.........Dr Wolfensberger also developed the concept of citizen advocacy, facilitating long-term relationships between a person with disability (or other vulnerable people)and a volunteer citizen.

.............Many people who have disabilities have benefited from his work in a change in focus from disability as a medical issue, or captives of care to one where a good life means living with others and in settings that are normally valued in our society. His work was instrumental in the deinstitutionalisation of thousands of people with disabilities. It has informed disability advocacy. I am aware that in his own life he personally modeled compassionate service to 'needy people', a much used Wolfensberger phrase."

Honoring those who work for a better world

French film Director Bertrand Tavernier's  film It All Starts Today  is a beautiful testament to the commitment and humanity of teachers (and other front line workers) who work with families and children suffering the consequences of neo-liberal market  and economic "reform". 

Like Pierre Bourdieu's  book The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society  Tavernier's film documents the new forms of social suffering that characterize not just French society, but the economies and societies of the western world.

Tavernier's deeply moving film tells the story of a kindergarten teacher in an impoverished region of France struggling to educate children of families devastated by unemployment, grinding poverty, deprivation, depression and economic hardship. These are children whose families are the casualties of neo-liberal market reform and economic and corporate restructuring.

The film shows the heroics and dedication of teachers, education aides, volunteers, health workers and social welfare workers who give themselves fully and devote their lives to improving the well being of the children and families in their care. They do this despite poor pay and appalling conditions, budget cutbacks and hostility, indifference and neglect from elected officials, politicians, some government agencies and workers, business groups and those who hold power.

 In Australia we accord little respect and honor to those front line workers and volunteers who work for a better world. We forget and ignore the teachers, child care workers, teachers aides, carers, aged care and disability workers, social welfare workers, aboriginal health workers, volunteers, family support workers, refuge workers, domestic violence counselors and millions of  other front line welfare and community workers who dedicate themselves to the care and well being of others, and who through their efforts make our society and communities better places.


Instead they are poorly paid and usually berated and stigmatized, labeled as do-gooders and bleeding hearts, or dismissed as rent seeking, vested interests who breed dependency and a welfare mentality in people.

No, in Australia we honor soldiers who fight in imperial wars, celebrities caught in the glare of their own importance, sportsmen who are paid exorbitantly and businessmen and corporations who pursue and accumulate wealth and power at the expense of the common good.

Jim Johnson has taken up a similar theme in a recent post on his excellent blog Notes on Politics, Theory and Biography and I thank him for his insights:

"I find it obsequious and cloying to hear the radio show hosts and politicians offering a "Thank you for your service" whenever they encounter a veteran or military personnel. What about the social workers and parole officers and teachers and, yes, scientists and artists, who work in underpaid professions for years and decades in order to contribute to a better world? After all, they could be out there peddling sub-prime mortgages (or some other form of snake oil) and making real money. When was the last time you heard someone - anyone - publicly thank those folks for their service? No, instead we are taking aim at them (the teachers and parole officers are, after all members of those dastardly public sector unions) in the misguided quest for fiscal responsibility"

Making protest visible: Public protest as a vehicle for ethical and moral action

Public protest is one outlet for citizens to express deeply held moral and ethical commitments. Protest actions provide people with a way to address critical moral and social questions and confront the injustices, small and big, that they see around them. Protest actions are are a vehicle for ethical visions and creative ideas for a better future.

All over Western Australia this week ordinary citizens participated in public protest actions.

The photo on the left is from one of these protest actions, a rally organized by the Human Rights Alliance in the Perth CBD to protest against Government law and order policies and the misuse of tasers and force against Aboriginal people in custody

On Tuesday this week environmental groups, Aboriginal groups, unions and civil society groups protested outside BHP's Perth Annual General Meeting  against BHP and the Barnett Government's plans to make WA a major nuclear mining

In the Kimberley a small group of protesters blockaded access roads to prevent Woodside rig contractors from drilling drill on the site of the proposed James Price Point gas plant. A large protest rally against the industrialization of the Kimberley will take place in Cottesloe on the 28th November.

As a reminder of the importance of public protests, big and small, the UK Guardian has run a series of photographs of important protest events in world history. I was particularly taken with this photo taken during the 1968 Prague Spring.

Civil society rising in the UK and Europe

In London this week 50,000 students protested against education cuts by the Conservative- Liberal coalition Government.

Media reports in Australia have focused only on the occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters and, unsurprisingly for the corporate media, have largely ignored the larger story. All over Europe there is rising militancy by civil society groups against government  imposed austerity measures.

As Nina Powers points out in this piece in The Guardian the 52,000 students who protested in London display the real meaning of "The Big Society" that David Cameron claims he wants to promote. But Cameron's vision is an illusion. The Tories and Liberal Democrats want to destroy that part of civil society that resists and protests, and  holds governments and the corporate and business elite to account.

In her Guardian piece Nina Powers writes:

The protest as a whole was extremely important, not just because of the large numbers it attracted, and shouldn't be understood simply in economic terms as a complaint against fees. It also represented the serious anger many feel about cuts to universities as they currently stand, and the ideological devastation of the education system if the coalition gets its way. It was a protest against the narrowing of horizons; a protest against Lib Dem hypocrisy; a protest against the increasingly utilitarian approach to human life that sees degrees as nothing but "investments" by individuals, and denies any link between education and the broader social good.

The protesters - students and others - who occupied Tory HQ will no doubt continue to be condemned in the days to come. But their anger is justified: the coalition government is ruining Britain for reasons of ideological perversity. The protests in France and Greece and the student occupations here, such as the recent takeover of Deptford Town Hall by Goldsmiths students on the day cuts were announced, are indicators of a new militancy

Noel Pearson and the shallowness of much social justice debate

Noel Pearson in his 2010 John Button Oration demolishes, quite rightly, much of the social justice rhetoric that the Labor Party faithful deploy, labelling it as hollow and meaningless:

"Whilst social justice is still part of Labor’s intra-mural pieties – a useful rallying cry for the true believers – in front of the nation at large the concept is muted and liturgical.


.... the notion of social justice is completely elusive and has for too long remained undefined by those who say they were and are all for it. Both the end state of justice and the means by which that end state is supposed to be achieved, is utterly undefined."

His diagnosis is partly correct and is a challenge to all who use the term "social justice".  But just as vague and meaningless for me is his idea of the "radical centre", which to me is hardly radical at all. 

As is often the case I find myself challenged by Noel Pearson's analysis and his intellectual critique, but disagreeing with his conclusions and solutions.