MP Kate Ellis says starving single parents to work is ‘fantastic’
Employment Participation Minister Kate Ellis has crawled into a moral sewer, describing the Gillard government’s success in starving 4000 single parents into work as a “fantastic thing” in an ABC interview this month.
Since January 80,000 single parents have suffered savage cuts of between $66 and $119 per week to their income as a result of being shifted from the Parenting Payment to the Newstart Allowance when their youngest child turns eight.
Two thirds of parents effected were working anyway and the “tough love” policy is just pushing them into dire poverty. Jaqueline Knox, a Sydney single mother, struggles to get her kids to school: “I’ve had to approach the school and say, ‘Can I pay the books off?’ And I can’t afford them at the moment. They’re wearing $4 school shoes and this is wrong and I work.” Others have had to give up study or neglect their children to work low paid, insecure jobs.
As she celebrates forcing single parents to live on $35 per day, Ellis enjoys a $190,550 per year base salary, the equivalent of approximately $388 dollars a day after tax.
Rich flee the public school system
Australian Education Union (AEU) research has revealed that the privileged are fleeing Australia’s underfunded public schools.
Over the past 25 years the proportion of low income students relative to high income students has almost doubled in state schools while 75 per cent of kids from Australia’s wealthiest families went private for high school, according to 2011 census data.
And why wouldn’t the rich jump ship? The government’s MySchool website shows that private schools enjoy a whopping 25 per cent more income and enjoy a higher rate of government funding increases than their public counterparts. As a result they have smaller classes and more teachers.
There is a massive chasm between haves and have nots. For example in 2011 Castle Hill High School, a Sydney public school had a net income of $10,496 a student, while Ascham School at Edgecliff had a net income $30,000 per student. Inequitable funding arrangements, introduced under former Prime Minister John Howard, are entrenching an education system where whoever has the fattest wallet gets ahead. Yet Gillard’s new Gonski reforms will continue the funding method.
NSW Liberals take bulldozer to rainbow crossing
In an act of bastardy, the misnamed Liberal NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay has spent $30,000 bulldozing the Rainbow Crossing on Oxford Street. The crossing was designed to mark 35 years of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Clover Moore’s City of Sydney Council was supposed to be responsible for removing the crossing after a one month trial, but Moore wrote to Gay questioning the need to do so. Gay responded by sending in the Roads and Maritime Services to tear up the crossing up in the dead of night. Independent MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich says one of the road workers reported being told it was an “emergency” as he was pulled off Ultimo roadworks to do the Liberals’ dirty work.
Gay’s ludicrous justification was that the crossing was removed in the “interests of pedestrian and road safety”, but safety records show no evidence of this whatsoever. The spiteful move, however, has encouraged LGBT pride. Hundreds of DIY chalk rainbow crossings have sprung up all over Australia since the crossing was ripped up.
Abbott to ‘stop the boats’ with anti-refugee drones
Tony Abbott is looking to the skies for an answer about how to “stop the boats”. No, he’s not praying for divine intervention, he’s planning to buy $1.5 billion dollars worth of anti-refugee drones when elected.
In response to the arrival of a boat carrying 66 Sri Lankan asylum seekers in Geraldton, WA in early April, Abbott announced that his government would buy seven unmanned aircraft to patrol the Australian coastline, transmitting information to the Navy and Customs. Abbott’s hysteria has emboldened Bob Katter of the Australia Party to go one better, saying optimal border protection would require 100 patrol boats armed with six cruise missiles each.
NSW Liberals take bulldozer to rainbow crossing
In an act of bastardy, the misnamed Liberal NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay has spent $30,000 bulldozing the Rainbow Crossing on Oxford Street. The crossing was designed to mark 35 years of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Clover Moore’s City of Sydney Council was supposed to be responsible for removing the crossing after a one month trial, but Moore wrote to Gay questioning the need to do so. Gay responded by sending in the Roads and Maritime Services to tear up the crossing up in the dead of night. Independent MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich says one of the road workers reported being told it was an “emergency” as he was pulled off Ultimo roadworks to do the Liberals’ dirty work.
Gay’s ludicrous justification was that the crossing was removed in the “interests of pedestrian and road safety”, but safety records show no evidence of this whatsoever. The spiteful move, however, has encouraged LGBT pride. Hundreds of DIY chalk rainbow crossings have sprung up all over Australia since the crossing was ripped up.
Research and writing by Adam Adelpour
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