Archive for September, 2004

As usual, I was right…

by tealou on September 28, 2004 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

Bidding war erupts on childcare:

“Mr Latham yesterday conceded that families that put their children into care for five days each week would be better off under the Coalition’s tax rebate plan.

But he said families usually used child care two to three days a week, and they would be between $20 to $44 a week better off under Labor’s one-free-day program. “

There you go. When are the ALP going to stop being such cynical vote-grabbers and put the money where it counts? I will not vote Liberal on ANY issue, but I am bitterly disappointed with the ALP Policy on this issue.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!

by tealou on September 27, 2004 in Uncategorized with No comments

Now, if there is one issue that I feel strongly about in this election, it is about the way the Howard government have, over the course of 8 years, created a regressive, conservative country that makes it damn hard to be a woman. Okay, to be fair he hasn’t made it difficult for all women, as long as they fit into John Howard’s idea of what a woman does. That is, if I sit at home, dependent on my husband, without any desire to find myself, find a job, or get an education, I am pretty much alright under this government. However, I am none of those things. I am a young woman, with an Arts degree, who wants to work full time and also wants to have a family. And I think, for the most part, I do it pretty darn well given the obstacles that have been placed in front of me. I also have more than just a passing interest in family policy, and have researched a few papers on the subject, so I guess its no surprise that I do feel strongly about the issue.

And here’s why.

If I decide to stay at home and be dependent on my husband, I get a payment of approximately $250 a fortnight. I also get heavily subsidised childcare, to the point where I only really need to pay about $8 a day ($40 a week). Now, that’s not so bad, and I believe that all families should get some assistance, however, wait till you see this.

If I go out and work part time, earning only $10,000 a year, my daycare costs double and I lose the $250 a fortnight. This means that we are actually worse off if I work anything but full time. Same goes for a job earning $20,000 a year working part time, except my daycare costs are now $35 a day. Now, if I work full time, earning $40,000 a year, we are considered “rich” by the government and I get to pay the full amount of daycare costs, which equals approximately $180 per week. Add to the problem that you only get the opportunity for full time daycare at the beginning of the year due to a major shortage of places, and voila! I end up out of work and I need to pay full fees for my daughter to attend daycare. Even if I am at home looking for work, because otherwise we lose our place and I am without care when I start a new job. Now, if you consider that we are paying less for rent than we do for daycare, you can see why I might be a little bit ticked off.

So, because I work because I want to and not because I have to, I fork out the $180 a week for a daycare place. So, if you consider that I only earn about $550 a week, being an entry level pleb (when the hell will THAT end?! I want more money!), when you consider the cost of daycare, parking, lunches, the opportunity cost of leisure time as well as the forfeiture of the $250 a week I get for staying at home, you can imagine why I am a bit resentful at barely breaking even.

To top it off, for three years in a row the Family “Assistance” Office have told us that we have a debt. Now, given that I don’t even receive payments because they just keep garnishing it to pay off last years debts (that I don’t even know how I accumulated – I always give them accurate information), and given that I didn’t even claim childcare for the 5 months we were in Esperance, you can imagine why, yes, I might be pissed off.

As a family we are in a position of not being able to get daycare places, and when we can, we pay a fortune for them. Like I said, I don’t mind because the centre my daughter goes to is fabulous, but geez…

So, for this election I have sat in hope, dying to hear Mr Latham tell me that he is going to ease my squeeze and make it easier for me to work. And then today, I read this:

NEWS.com.au | Latham’s $1.6bn free childcare plan (September 27, 2004)

Looks promising, doesn’t it?

Wrong.

Normally I would not get in a resentful rant about people having it better than me, but I can’t help but wonder how this improves the system for those mothers that work in any way? All it is going to do is encourage those stay-at-home mothers who wouldn’t ordinarily put their children in daycare to put their kids into care, and to give those who already have heavily subsidised care some breathing room. The extra places he has offered to fund would barely even cover the new demand from the stay-at-homes. It in no way addresses the real issue of affordability of daycare for full time workers, nor the availability of care. The single mums and stay-at-home mums are still the only people benefiting from these policies.

Sure, i’ll get a free day, but all it will do is put upward pressure on the price of the other four days. And yet again, the full timers will subsidise those who have the luxury of staying home with their children. But heck, i’ll keep doing it, despite my disappointment in the ALP’s policies, because I am committed to being a working parent. Mark Latham is a politician who is very hit and miss, and this one is most certainly a miss.

Queer Eye for the..ermm… Fuel Guy

by tealou on September 25, 2004 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

As you all may know, I am not the kind of person to bitch about just any trivial subject. So it may surprise you that I am about to act really out of character and bitch about a “customer service” representative. Again. But first…

I am really bad at filling up my car with petrol. I always leave it to the very last minute, to the point where I am worried my car is going to have to chug to the station. It’s not a money problem and I pass at least three service stations on the way home. For some reason I am always chasing that elusive sub-dollar-per-litre fuel price, yet it never quite works out. It’s a bit like Homer Simpson really – Drive to the first station: $1.01 a litre. Decide to see what the next one is. Drive to the second one: 99c a litre, but meh, I can’t bothered making a right hand turn in traffic. I’ll try the next one. Fuel running on empty, getting very nervous. Drive to the third station $1.03 a litre. D’oh!

And this happens every week.

And so you’re wondering “why on earth do we care about this?”

I’ll tell you. It’s CONTEXT you illiterate moron!

Which brings me to my Caltex experience yesterday. I did the usual $1.01 “shit”. Then my car’s light went on and I drove to the next closest servo, which was the Caltex in Beechboro. $1.03 a litre. Okay, whatever.

So I get out of my car, and proceed to fill up the car, the usual routine, and then go in to pay for my petrol. The “customer service” guy gets this look on his face, really bitchy-like. Sort of like that blonde guy on Queer Eye when he says something really nasty, girlfriend…

He looks at me, and says in his best Ricki Lake voice: “You know, that’s a prepaid bowser. You’re supposed to come in and pay first”. At which point I was looking for a camera, because I had never heard of this before.

“Sorry I didn’t realise”, I said.

“Yes, well, there was a sign on there saying it, but…oh well”.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t read it”.

At which point he rolls his eyes, sniggers and smirks to himself in his god-aren’t-you-an-idiot tone. Normally I would just let it go, but he was being so snippy with me. So I said “so, I have to come in and pay for my fuel first, then go out and put it in, then come back in?”

“Yes”

“But what if I don’t know how much it’s going to be to fill up my car?”

He sniggered again. I couldn’t believe it. I just laughed at him and walked out. And then I thought of a funny thing to say by the time I was in the car. Dammit.

But how annoying is that? Not only have the replaced petrol station attendants with self-serve machines, they now expect me to READ things for myself? Shit, that means that they expect me to be twice as skilled as the attendants they replaced! I not only have to pump my own petrol, but I have to be literate as well! The world is going to shit!

As much as I’d like to say that I won’t go back. I mist likely will, because it will always be that third station that I pull into when I am scared my car is going to run out of fuel again.

Damn you Schoolfriends…

by tealou on September 17, 2004 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

I had a heart “procedure” on Monday, and as a result, am limited in my activites whilst I recover. In spite of the “imposed leave” (see previous post) I am on, I can’t even do housework because I feel too crook. Anyway, after visiting the Lisa Loeb Forum for the fourth time with no new posts, an email appeared in my Inbox from Schoolfriends announcing that there are new people registered at my school. So, in my boredom I wander over to schoolfriends.com.au (which I haven’t visited in a good 6 months or so).

To my surprise, there were actually two new names I recognised. I contacted one of them, and the other caused me major stress and made me question my whole existence. For obvious reasons I won’t name names, but I will call her “M”. Let me take you back…

M was the person at school you simultaneously hated and wanted to be. She was good looking, artistic, intelligent, funny, and popular. And to make matters worse, she got “Champion Girl” at our school athletics carnival. She was on the student council, she organised the ball. She was Head Girl. She dated the “cricketers” (which really is a stupid thing to look up to her for – after all they were just vacuum headed bogans anyway…but still), and, to top it off, she had money. She didn’t appear to need anything.

I, on the other hand, was the ‘gifted’ child that was never understood (That would imply, of course, that I am understood now, which isn’t the case!). Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”, may as well be my life story (except for the super powers bit…I haven’t quite mastered that yet). I came from a family best described as the “underclass”, whose primary objective was to sabotage any attempts of other family members to better themselves. From the day I turned 14, I was working most afternoons to pay my own school fees. I was good-looking enough, but only wore what I could afford. I was athletic and played sports, I was involved in the school radio station. I also had a smart mouth, which was the source of a lot of my problems at school… but still. I had my fair share of achievements in school, was always bright, and in hindsight it wasn’t so bad.

But M was that person that always made me feel fat, ugly, stupid and poor. I used to look at her life and wish that I had it that good. No matter how hard I worked to buy new clothes or to fit in, she always came out better. And I doubt she even realised it. I don’t think I ever saw her work for anything. Of course, she did, but in my teenage dreamland her life was better.

So, long story short, like anyone who didn’t fit in I always secretly hoped that I would end up more successful than everyone – I would breeze into my reunion and everybody would love me again. I would have a grand old pissing contest AND be a wonderful person and they’d all love me. However, after high school I didn’t really give it much more thought, and figured she’d just become a normal person with a normal job and I would keep plodding along until my hard work pays off.

Which brings me to my schoolfriends visit. I see M’s name – teasing me. Lulling me into a false, voyeuristic, one-upping moment where I think I have won. I click on her name. And damn, she’s successful. She spends half her life in the US and half her life here. She’s happily engaged to her boss, and, yet again, leads a nice life in the fashion business, as well as taking some of her valuable time to work with underprivileged children in a third world country in between travelling. Is this a joke?!

And suddenly, I am 15 again. I grumble to myself that this isn’t how its supposed to be – people like that are supposed to be unhappy, miserable and poor, and those who work hard are supposed to be a success. After all, that’s what Romy and Michelle told me! Janeane Garofalo’s character got rich from quick burning paper, didn’t she?! And the cheerleaders and jocks all ended up loser drunks! Thats how its supposed to be!

So now, here I sit, feeling completely and utterly inadequate, realising that my 10 year reunion is happening in 2 years and I have very little to show for it, except a bunch of qualifications and no stable career path. How boring is it to be a public servant? Not only that, but how much of a loser am I that I am not even a permanent nor important public servant? It doesn’t look very promising, does it? I am sure in ten years I will feel differently, but man, just once I would like to metaphorically trump M. Yeah, that’d be nice.

When you've lost me, you know there's a problem.

by tealou on September 8, 2004 in Uncategorized with No comments

You all may have noticed the conspicuous lack of Election commentary on my blog. I am as surprised as the rest of you – after all, I had great plans of educating the ill-informed about how “preferences just flow” in Elections; I had considered a rant about John Howard being a snotty little shit (ok, well I have done that one before), I thought about a blog about Mark I-only-agree-with-him-50%-of-the-time-at-best-but- he’s-better-than-the-alternative Latham… but, I can’t explain it.

I completely lack inspiration about this campaign. In 1998 I did letterbox drops for my local member at 2 in the morning, manned the polling booth, and got pissed at the commiseration party. In 2001 I was less active but still as passionate, if not burned out by ALP bullshit. But this time around, I am a different person. I am a person who has woken up to Politics. OK, at least I have woken up to power and how it corrupts.

Is it wrong to be a political person, yet not give a shit about an election?