hoops

Today I meet Bethany, a plain Jane young woman who is a Job Seeker Solutions Manager at Mission Australia. I arrive just before nine and take a seat. A skinny girl and her mother sit opposite. So does a bloke named Thomas. All look slightly disconcerted.

Centrelink made the appointment for me during my 'virtual seminar'. Mission Oz lives around the corner from Centrelink in an ugly brown-bread building. Their glossy strategic plan lies on a bench beside me. It’s peppered with motherhood statements and quotes from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not your average job seekers, in small print at the bottom of each page.

Bethany conducts me through a passage and up a flight of stairs. As we ascend I break the ice by referring to the biblical references and asking what denomination the Mission is. They’re all about community welfare, she tells me. (Oh, that denomination.)

In her drab office she asks the usual questions, emails me the link to a useful federal government job seeker website, and tells me I’m on my own—job hunting—for 13 weeks. If I’m still unemployed then, they’ll call me back and assist me some more.

She escorts me back to reception where I’m obliged to complete an online profile. The receptionist takes three minutes to log me in and I finish the profile in a minute and a half. None of this is informative or useful. It’s all about going through the motions, jumping through Centrelink’s hoops. Do as we say or no Newstart allowance for you.

Back home I open Bethany’s email, keen to explore the useful government website. It’s a French farce of spiralling links that disappear up its own fundament. One takes me to a multi-coloured little program titled my future (lower case). It features a condescending demo and another profile. Would I rather be a pilot or a landscape gardener, a bus driver or an actor, a sports coach or a journalist?

Sixty or more of these snap decisions allows the program to inform me that I really want to drive trucks, be a farmhand or a scuba diver, all planets away from blipping my radar. I abandon my future and return to my present. I have to complete form Mod F before my Centrelink appointment next Tuesday.

Mod F is all about my one-person business, Plain Taking. I write stuff, edit stuff, train people to be mentors or to have a better understanding of mental illness. Centrelink can't wait to hear all about it. They want to see a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement, a depreciation schedule, a register of assets and liabilities, and my accountant’s details.

I don’t, of course, have an accountant or any of these documents. I’ve never given them a thought since the business began on 27 January 2005. They want to check out my latest tax return too. I don’t have one: it was lodged online and I didn’t bother with a print-out.

Rock on.