Starving to death. How is this possible in Australia today?
Mar 13, 2021 17:25:29 GMT 7
ghostbuster and itsmylife08 like this
Post by bear on Mar 13, 2021 17:25:29 GMT 7
My friend Rita was starving to death. How is this even possible in Australia today?
Allowing poverty to continue is a political choice. The government proved that when it waved its wand and jobseeker doubled
Giving [people] more money would do absolutely nothing … probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.” – Anne Ruston, minister for families and social services, October 2019
How many people in Australia are starving?
I’ve written in articles in the past of my gratitude for the disability support pension and for living in community housing which ensures that my rent is capped at 25% of my income.
Raising Newstart would 'give drug dealers more money', social services minister says
Read more
I knew intellectually that nobody could live on the jobseeker payment, that only one or perhaps two houses in Australia are affordable for a single person on jobseeker, but I didn’t have a practical experience of what that could mean.
Before I met Rita I didn’t know of anyone personally who was starving to death.
Rita is a northern suburban mother, a whistleblower and an ardent activist.
She was enticed to her first Anti-Poverty Network meeting on the allure of free pizza. She stayed because she felt the stirrings of community.
At the time she was receiving $560 a fortnight and her weekly rent was $251. Yes, that’s right – do the maths. Her rent was $502 a fortnight, leaving her with the magnanimous sum of $58 to last two weeks for everything else (food, medicine, electricity, gas, petrol, etc, etc).
She had already burnt through her super and any savings just to attempt the mythical meeting of the ends. Eventually she sold her car for food, then her fridge. (Our collective mordant humour exploded at the very thought when she revealed this to me.)
As an activist, Rita is a firecracker. She researches her memes assiduously. Pages of information are distilled into stark messages – felt-tipped black pen scribbled across blank paper. Selfies of her holding statistics and searing questions are peppered across Facebook.
The woman had been slowly starving for the past year and it took three days to fix it
When the Covid supplement was introduced, she rushed out to buy new underwear and then sent a picture of them to Ruston as proof of what she was spending her money on. As the old adage goes, “She is not backwards in coming forwards.”
So why didn’t she ask for help?
But is that the right question to ask? Surely the onus is not on the less fortunate to beg and kowtow for bread and water?
The real question is, “Why didn’t anybody notice?”
Perhaps the simplest answer is: “Because things like this shouldn’t happen in Australia.” We’re simply not used to them. It is beyond our ken.
None of us in the poverty network, except one, had experience of dealing with people starving to death. So we didn’t recognise the signs.
It was M, a fabulous activist in her late 70s with the spirit of a 30-year-old, who finally drew the threads together. As we were coming home from a particularly onerous meeting, she said:
“I’m really worried about Rita. I’m frightened she’s starving to death. I’ve seen it in Cambodia.”
The slow-spinning cogs of cognitive dissonance began to clatter and whir as my brain went into meltdown. I understood as fact that no one could survive on jobseeker but I could not fathom that I personally knew and was becoming friends with someone who was starving in Australia.
The dissonance dissipated and was replaced by invective ire. I began to swear, profusely, then I somehow reined in my inner Boudicca and clicked into fix-it mode instead.
“OK – I’ve got stuff in my pantry that I’m not using – have you?”
“Yes.”
“Right. We do a ring-around and ask people to donate a few cans of non-perishables and we fill her pantry. If her pantry is full then she won’t starve. She may not be eating well, but she’ll be eating something.”
M concurred and we discussed tactics.
I started to ring everybody I knew. Most people were great. They asked practical things – does she have any food allergies? What won’t she eat?
Others were not so accommodating. They questioned her spending, they asked if I’d seen her cupboards.
Regardless of the less charitable, it took three days to fill Rita’s pantry. It was that easy.
The woman had been slowly starving for the past year and it took three days to fix it.
There is still food coming in – the leftover non-perishables have been taken to our shared office space to be used as an emergency stash for anybody who needs it. We’ve called it Rita’s Pantry and intend to make it an ongoing feature of our activism against the war on the poor.
None of us have any money. We have no resources except ourselves. If it’s that easy for a few “welfarers” to get together to help someone – then what in all the gods’ names is wrong with our government?
I am living in fear of what life will be like when jobseeker is cut back
Read more
Allowing poverty to continue is a political choice. The government proved that when it waved its political wand and magically the jobseeker payment was doubled by the addition of the Covid supplement. It’s about priorities and ideological preferences, not a lack of resources.
It is also a political choice to plunge more than 1.5 million people back into abject impecunity when the supplement ends, thus condemning them to homelessness and hunger.
The cruelty of it is breathtaking.
I asked Rita why she thought she couldn’t ask for help. She said she had spent her life caring for others as a mother, as a carer. Now that it was she who needed to be taken care of, the thought of being a burden was too much to bear. She was simply too humiliated.
Even though we were not intentionally struthious, I still think we should have picked up on the signs.
Taking lots of leftovers home from meetings
No longer being able to eat much at one sitting, then taking three-quarters of the meal home
Factually stating specificities such as, “Oh excellent! That’ll do me for three meals” instead of moanings such as, “I can’t remember the last time I ate”
The visuals of the Power to the Poor T-shirt steadily getting bigger and bigger until it swamped her newly bird-like frame.
What would have happened to Rita if she hadn’t joined the Australian Poverty Network? If M hadn’t noticed the symptoms of starvation?
How many other Ritas are out there?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/my-friend-rita-was-starving-to-death-how-is-this-even-possible-in-australia-today
Allowing poverty to continue is a political choice. The government proved that when it waved its wand and jobseeker doubled
Giving [people] more money would do absolutely nothing … probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.” – Anne Ruston, minister for families and social services, October 2019
How many people in Australia are starving?
I’ve written in articles in the past of my gratitude for the disability support pension and for living in community housing which ensures that my rent is capped at 25% of my income.
Raising Newstart would 'give drug dealers more money', social services minister says
Read more
I knew intellectually that nobody could live on the jobseeker payment, that only one or perhaps two houses in Australia are affordable for a single person on jobseeker, but I didn’t have a practical experience of what that could mean.
Before I met Rita I didn’t know of anyone personally who was starving to death.
Rita is a northern suburban mother, a whistleblower and an ardent activist.
She was enticed to her first Anti-Poverty Network meeting on the allure of free pizza. She stayed because she felt the stirrings of community.
At the time she was receiving $560 a fortnight and her weekly rent was $251. Yes, that’s right – do the maths. Her rent was $502 a fortnight, leaving her with the magnanimous sum of $58 to last two weeks for everything else (food, medicine, electricity, gas, petrol, etc, etc).
She had already burnt through her super and any savings just to attempt the mythical meeting of the ends. Eventually she sold her car for food, then her fridge. (Our collective mordant humour exploded at the very thought when she revealed this to me.)
As an activist, Rita is a firecracker. She researches her memes assiduously. Pages of information are distilled into stark messages – felt-tipped black pen scribbled across blank paper. Selfies of her holding statistics and searing questions are peppered across Facebook.
The woman had been slowly starving for the past year and it took three days to fix it
When the Covid supplement was introduced, she rushed out to buy new underwear and then sent a picture of them to Ruston as proof of what she was spending her money on. As the old adage goes, “She is not backwards in coming forwards.”
So why didn’t she ask for help?
But is that the right question to ask? Surely the onus is not on the less fortunate to beg and kowtow for bread and water?
The real question is, “Why didn’t anybody notice?”
Perhaps the simplest answer is: “Because things like this shouldn’t happen in Australia.” We’re simply not used to them. It is beyond our ken.
None of us in the poverty network, except one, had experience of dealing with people starving to death. So we didn’t recognise the signs.
It was M, a fabulous activist in her late 70s with the spirit of a 30-year-old, who finally drew the threads together. As we were coming home from a particularly onerous meeting, she said:
“I’m really worried about Rita. I’m frightened she’s starving to death. I’ve seen it in Cambodia.”
The slow-spinning cogs of cognitive dissonance began to clatter and whir as my brain went into meltdown. I understood as fact that no one could survive on jobseeker but I could not fathom that I personally knew and was becoming friends with someone who was starving in Australia.
The dissonance dissipated and was replaced by invective ire. I began to swear, profusely, then I somehow reined in my inner Boudicca and clicked into fix-it mode instead.
“OK – I’ve got stuff in my pantry that I’m not using – have you?”
“Yes.”
“Right. We do a ring-around and ask people to donate a few cans of non-perishables and we fill her pantry. If her pantry is full then she won’t starve. She may not be eating well, but she’ll be eating something.”
M concurred and we discussed tactics.
I started to ring everybody I knew. Most people were great. They asked practical things – does she have any food allergies? What won’t she eat?
Others were not so accommodating. They questioned her spending, they asked if I’d seen her cupboards.
Regardless of the less charitable, it took three days to fill Rita’s pantry. It was that easy.
The woman had been slowly starving for the past year and it took three days to fix it.
There is still food coming in – the leftover non-perishables have been taken to our shared office space to be used as an emergency stash for anybody who needs it. We’ve called it Rita’s Pantry and intend to make it an ongoing feature of our activism against the war on the poor.
None of us have any money. We have no resources except ourselves. If it’s that easy for a few “welfarers” to get together to help someone – then what in all the gods’ names is wrong with our government?
I am living in fear of what life will be like when jobseeker is cut back
Read more
Allowing poverty to continue is a political choice. The government proved that when it waved its political wand and magically the jobseeker payment was doubled by the addition of the Covid supplement. It’s about priorities and ideological preferences, not a lack of resources.
It is also a political choice to plunge more than 1.5 million people back into abject impecunity when the supplement ends, thus condemning them to homelessness and hunger.
The cruelty of it is breathtaking.
I asked Rita why she thought she couldn’t ask for help. She said she had spent her life caring for others as a mother, as a carer. Now that it was she who needed to be taken care of, the thought of being a burden was too much to bear. She was simply too humiliated.
Even though we were not intentionally struthious, I still think we should have picked up on the signs.
Taking lots of leftovers home from meetings
No longer being able to eat much at one sitting, then taking three-quarters of the meal home
Factually stating specificities such as, “Oh excellent! That’ll do me for three meals” instead of moanings such as, “I can’t remember the last time I ate”
The visuals of the Power to the Poor T-shirt steadily getting bigger and bigger until it swamped her newly bird-like frame.
What would have happened to Rita if she hadn’t joined the Australian Poverty Network? If M hadn’t noticed the symptoms of starvation?
How many other Ritas are out there?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/my-friend-rita-was-starving-to-death-how-is-this-even-possible-in-australia-today
