It’s rigged, you know! The whole system is designed to drive us Tribal Elders to the brink of insanity! And it’s working! Mention a government service to me, and I start whimpering…tears are close to flowing…followed by a string of expletives. To say I have developed a phobia about government services is an understatement. I would rather have my nails pulled out…less pain would be involved!

It’s not as if this is a recent frustration…it’s been planned by the government to work us over through the decades, knowing that the whimpering messes we become by out three score and ten years will have us like putty in their hands, ready to give in to whatever delusion they have created for us. Who remembers the old Centrelink of the 80s and 90s, tied into the CES (Commonwealth Employment Service – before they decided it was better to have private enterprise ripping them off and doing nothing) with their job boards! Every week (or fortnight…I can’t remember) we had to trot into a Centrelink office to hand in our forms to say we’d been searching for work. Of course, we had lied on them, and crossed our fingers that they wouldn’t choose our form to check up on. The thing I was thankful for was that I had a mate who worked in our local office. Yes, he did oil the wheels.

When I finally had to leave the workforce in 1993, ACON had an advocate …Fred Oberg…who did all the dirty work for us, both getting onto the disability pension, and applying for the housing subsidy for those of us in private rental. All the same, we still had to have occasional interactions with both those departments, and for some unknown reason it was inevitable that SOMETHING wouldn’t have been done by the book, and your single visit turned into three, with you trailing sheafs of paperwork that must have kept somebody in the job. Then there was the Dental Hospital…when they finally realised we were all losing our teeth thanks to candida. The receptionists have to be the crankiest people I have ever encountered! Once you got in…no easy feat…they yanked all your teeth out. Then they made you dentures. My first set…I’d love to know what photo they used …had teeth so big I looked like Bugs Bunny. I thanked them profusely…and used a BGF subsidy to get a set from a private dental clinic.

But I’ve survived AIDS…and thought naïvely that my battles were over! Then I encountered the new, cleverly disguised, Housing. Having tried ringing Centrelink, Housing, and My Aged Care,to be told “Your call is important to us. Your place in line is…257…please don’t hang up. We are experiencing a higher than usual number of calls…a consultant will be with you shortly Here is some music while you wait”, I decided to apply online. Wrong choice! Not only is it extremely time-consuming, and frustrating including time outs…it enjoys…I’m pretty sure of that terminology…taking you in circles. You’ve gone to the trouble to have a medical assessment form filled out by your GP. You upload all the documentation they request. You submit it! Within minutes, you get an email saying they need more documents for, say, your medical evidence. You think…I’ve already submitted this…so you resubmit the documents you have already submitted. Then another email saying they require more documents that you have submitted . I got so frustrated by this stage that I contacted the then Housing Officer at PL, and begged for help before I had a total meltdown. They got me through the process.

Now…My Aged Care! The web site finally tipped me over the edge. There are page after page of information…each page with a dozen links…you click on a link and instead of just being given the information you need you get…another dozen links…which leads to…yet another dozen links. The lists of providers for those lucky enough to get the highly prized client number, is staggering, and you are left on your own to sort the good from the bad, knowing that…at the end of the day…they are all really after the government subsidy cash. How much subsidy you get depends on which of four categories you end up in when assessed. It seems that no single provider will deliver all the services you need, so you could end up having two or three providers to have all your requirements covered. I just went through and picked four who didn’t appear to be attached to a religious body. When my sanity finally returns, I’ll check them out more thoroughly.

It’s time the government learnt that at seventy…I’m old!…I’m cranky!…I’m impatient!…and I just want information in a form I can digest easily…and don’t keep me waiting on phones!

Tim Alderman