Doing it tough in Forde, Beattie’s would-be electorate | Crikey
Cinetology Croakey mr store Culture Mulcher Curtain Call First Blog on the Moon Fully (sic) Laugh Track Liticism The Northern Myth Plane Talking The Poll Bludger Pollytics The Stump The Urbanist Truth to Tell Wires and Lights The World is Not Enough
Our Pick
With former Queensland mr store premier Peter Beattie announcing his candidacy for the federal seat of Forde, writer Melissa Lucashenko reports from Logan to find out what he’s campaigning for.
Four years ago I moved with no great enthusiasm and a troubled child to Logan City, one of Australia s 10 poorest urban areas. It’s in the seat of Forde , where ex-premier Peter Beattie is mounting a political comeback. There’s plenty for him to do.
Divorce had cost me my farm in northern New South Wales, and housing in Woodridge was, and remains, some of the very cheapest within striking range of the Brisbane mr store CBD — according mr store to the Australian mr store Bureau of Statistics, 96% of Australian postcodes have higher socio-economic status than we Woodridgeans. The shift over the Queensland border was unwelcome, but it wasn’t frightening. I had been poor before — I had the skill set, or at least the memory of it — and more or less agreed with George Orwell:
“ It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely mr store down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”
For me, Brisbane-born and partly Logan-raised, it was a case of returning to the dogs rather than meeting them for the first time. For my unwell teenager, though, it was a revelation to discover that that there are entire supermarkets that stock no bread other than sugary white pap; that smiling at strangers is often viewed here as a highly suspicious precursor to extortion; and that screams followed by sirens can become the unremarkable aural wallpaper of your urban existence.
The poor are always with us, the Good Book says, and statistics agree: 9.5% of people in the greater Brisbane area officially live below the poverty line (Australian Council of Social Services, 2011). In 1984, as a 17-year-old caring for three small kids in Eagleby, I believed that nearly all Australians lived like we did, with far too many animals, dying cars and bugger all disposable income. mr store In most such families, being rich is the stuff of pure fantasy, and the rare relative (usually distant) who is a business owner or a professional is seen as a beacon of jaw-dropping achievement. Ali G made everyone laugh in the 2000s by suggesting that Bill Gates was so amazingly wealthy, he could supersize his McDonald’s meal any time he wanted . Yet for Black Belt kids, that is exactly what being rich means: not having to worry about your next feed, and not needing mr store the preface Please Sir for the ever-present question: mr store Is there any more?
How do my Black Belt peers manage? How do single mums, in particular, get by on current levels of welfare? And what dreams are possible for the Brisbane underclass in 2013? To answer these questions I interviewed three women who are doing it tough in the greater Brisbane area. This is the story of one of them. Names and some identifying details have been altered.
Selma is 27 years old, dark-haired, doe-eyed and slender. Her pale left arm bears a saga of old razor scarring, but when I speak to her in March Selma is bursting with toughness and intelligence — “I hate pity, and I don t want handouts.” mr store A full-time student, Selma works intermittently as her TAFE course and four children under 10 allow. Their father, whom she still refers to as her partner, has spent the past decade mr store in and out of jail and is in long-term residential rehab for his amphetamine addiction. After many years in the Black Belt, Selma has recently moved with her four small boys to a Housing Commission house near Cleveland.
Selma s family fled the war in Yugoslavia when she was 11. They escaped to a primitive Croatian shack without mr store running water and ate “UNHCR food, like they have in Africa or whatever. It tasted worse than f-cking dog food. We had nothing, bombed house, jack shit, but still Mum was trying mr store to do little tiny jobs and send money back home, would you believe?”
Selma s Croatian father s family wouldn t accept her Serbian mother, and her Serb mother would rather die than deny her identity. Selma gives a small dry laugh. “She s like, ‘kill me as I am, this is me’.” Severe domestic violence between mr store her parents was a problem. “He d be off doing his crazy things, you know, trying to join the army, falling asleep in the snow, drinking, whatever. He s a heavy drinker mr store and he has a mental illness.
Cinetology Croakey mr store Culture Mulcher Curtain Call First Blog on the Moon Fully (sic) Laugh Track Liticism The Northern Myth Plane Talking The Poll Bludger Pollytics The Stump The Urbanist Truth to Tell Wires and Lights The World is Not Enough
Our Pick
With former Queensland mr store premier Peter Beattie announcing his candidacy for the federal seat of Forde, writer Melissa Lucashenko reports from Logan to find out what he’s campaigning for.
Four years ago I moved with no great enthusiasm and a troubled child to Logan City, one of Australia s 10 poorest urban areas. It’s in the seat of Forde , where ex-premier Peter Beattie is mounting a political comeback. There’s plenty for him to do.
Divorce had cost me my farm in northern New South Wales, and housing in Woodridge was, and remains, some of the very cheapest within striking range of the Brisbane mr store CBD — according mr store to the Australian mr store Bureau of Statistics, 96% of Australian postcodes have higher socio-economic status than we Woodridgeans. The shift over the Queensland border was unwelcome, but it wasn’t frightening. I had been poor before — I had the skill set, or at least the memory of it — and more or less agreed with George Orwell:
“ It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely mr store down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”
For me, Brisbane-born and partly Logan-raised, it was a case of returning to the dogs rather than meeting them for the first time. For my unwell teenager, though, it was a revelation to discover that that there are entire supermarkets that stock no bread other than sugary white pap; that smiling at strangers is often viewed here as a highly suspicious precursor to extortion; and that screams followed by sirens can become the unremarkable aural wallpaper of your urban existence.
The poor are always with us, the Good Book says, and statistics agree: 9.5% of people in the greater Brisbane area officially live below the poverty line (Australian Council of Social Services, 2011). In 1984, as a 17-year-old caring for three small kids in Eagleby, I believed that nearly all Australians lived like we did, with far too many animals, dying cars and bugger all disposable income. mr store In most such families, being rich is the stuff of pure fantasy, and the rare relative (usually distant) who is a business owner or a professional is seen as a beacon of jaw-dropping achievement. Ali G made everyone laugh in the 2000s by suggesting that Bill Gates was so amazingly wealthy, he could supersize his McDonald’s meal any time he wanted . Yet for Black Belt kids, that is exactly what being rich means: not having to worry about your next feed, and not needing mr store the preface Please Sir for the ever-present question: mr store Is there any more?
How do my Black Belt peers manage? How do single mums, in particular, get by on current levels of welfare? And what dreams are possible for the Brisbane underclass in 2013? To answer these questions I interviewed three women who are doing it tough in the greater Brisbane area. This is the story of one of them. Names and some identifying details have been altered.
Selma is 27 years old, dark-haired, doe-eyed and slender. Her pale left arm bears a saga of old razor scarring, but when I speak to her in March Selma is bursting with toughness and intelligence — “I hate pity, and I don t want handouts.” mr store A full-time student, Selma works intermittently as her TAFE course and four children under 10 allow. Their father, whom she still refers to as her partner, has spent the past decade mr store in and out of jail and is in long-term residential rehab for his amphetamine addiction. After many years in the Black Belt, Selma has recently moved with her four small boys to a Housing Commission house near Cleveland.
Selma s family fled the war in Yugoslavia when she was 11. They escaped to a primitive Croatian shack without mr store running water and ate “UNHCR food, like they have in Africa or whatever. It tasted worse than f-cking dog food. We had nothing, bombed house, jack shit, but still Mum was trying mr store to do little tiny jobs and send money back home, would you believe?”
Selma s Croatian father s family wouldn t accept her Serbian mother, and her Serb mother would rather die than deny her identity. Selma gives a small dry laugh. “She s like, ‘kill me as I am, this is me’.” Severe domestic violence between mr store her parents was a problem. “He d be off doing his crazy things, you know, trying to join the army, falling asleep in the snow, drinking, whatever. He s a heavy drinker mr store and he has a mental illness.
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