a living

My visit to Centrelink turns my mind to the question that assails me each time I am ‘between jobs’. What duty does a government have to its citizens who are down on their luck? Conversely, what duty does each and every man have to earn his own living, make his own way?

I ask my good woman what happens in Serbia when someone is unemployed, though I already know the answer. The State offers scant support and the family looks after its own. The modern welfare state is only on the first world’s agenda. The second and third worlds must make do.

Billions of people around the planet graft out a daily income by whatever means: begging, rat-scrounging through rubbish tips, wheeling and dealing in whatever commodity is at hand—your sex, your children, your mean but honest labour.

It means being at the mercy of fire, famine and flood in a way no subsidised, whining Australian farmer ever contemplates. It means populate or perish; pro-choice feminism is an exclusive privilege of the developed world.

Contrast this to the callowness of my early adulthood: I thought the state could afford to provide even for those who didn’t want to work because they were just plain lazy, wondering no doubt, if I was one of them. I wasn’t.

So when I had children of my own I told them that life is not fair, that luck, good looks and money are not doled out equally, or at all, to each person. I wanted them to understand that life owed them nothing. When they were little this stopped squabbles over who would sit in the front seat of the car with me; later it helped them to grow into independent young adults.

Young Aussies grow softer by the generation in this country. Two radio presenters talk about their late-teenage sons’ attitudes to work. One sees no need to work at anything before leaving university. Then he’ll get a job. The other’s sons are happy for their father to shell out for more and more education as they postpone any entry to real life.

My good woman, the good Serb, has kittens at the start of the school holidays because her son has no work. He will eat himself to death at home out of boredom and inability to entertain himself with anything but a screen and a fridgeful of food. She makes him walk the streets, CV in hand, and he lands two jobs.

Her children earn good holiday money. I ask if they pay any board. She is surprised to hear that I paid board from the first dollar I earned a in the school holidays after year nine. I was paid a pittance but dutifully handed 25 per cent of it to my mother to contribute to the food I ate. It was my introduction to learning to pay my way. My own children saw no great need for holiday jobs, but resentfully paid board like I did when they finally earned money.

I emerge from Centrelink having proved my eligibility for income support but contemplating the welfare state, my part in it, my right or otherwise to money from the public purse. Should I feel at least relieved or elated? I feel neither, but rather something I can’t put my finger on.

The whole business of dealing with Centrelink is hard work, a challenge at every level. The small amount of the Newstart allowance (by modern Australian standards—even employer groups say it’s too low—could be seen as compensation for having to endure Centrelink.

Still, I’m troubled, trying to express how I feel. The closest I get is inadequate. This is not good, so I determine simply to put it out of mind and get on with the gardening, the writing, the riding, and the templates project.

Experience tells me that no matter how earnestly I look for work, it is much more likely that work will find me.

Rock on.