I am, you are, we are Australian

Wow, what a week. A rollercoaster of on-again-off-again jobs, homes, goals, ambitions and absolute and utter confusion about my own opinions on many things.

I’ve long been someone who likes to have my sensibilities challenged. Yes, I admit I might be someone who may initially become defensive and I will, without doubt, always argue my point of view if I believe I’m right but I’m quite often very open to being wrong.

I think it’s an admirable quality to be able to admit when you are wrong. It’s one of the qualities I actually admired in John Howard, as a Prime Minister – his ability to occasionally say “oops, got that a bit wrong…egg on my face…let’s clean it up” – obviously, I’m paraphrasing.

One thing I’m really not a fan of, however, is arrogance. I’m probably in an enviable position in that this is the first time in my adult life that I’m living under a government that I did not vote for. I really have no desire to be a political activist, or to get involved with politics myself. I personally believe that much more change is effected from outside the walls of parliament than what comes from within. If you truly want to help someone – don’t enter politics.

I’m sitting here now though in quite a quandary because, despite having been a fan of John Howard’s government, I have no stomach for the new Liberal party and I absolutely despise Labor.

Let me answer two questions I’ve been asked frequently, just quickly. Did I write directly to the Prime Minister and the Queensland Premier regarding homelessness (The Open Letter)? Yes, I did. Did I receive any response? No, I did not.

Kevin Rudd has admitted that he has failed on the issue of homelessness and that in all reality he has buckley’s of halving homelessness by 2020, as he had previously intended to do. So, what’s the alternative?

On 612 ABC radio this morning Tony Abbott was interviewed by Madonna King and I put forward the following question via Twitter:

“@612brisbane Kevin Rudd admits he has failed on the issue of homelessness. What can Abbott do while 100,000+ (incl children) sleep rough?”

Below is Tony Abbott’s response:

“Well, I wouldn’t make promises that you can’t keep and homelessness is a serious problem, but homelessness is a function of many things, only some of which are within government’s control. I mean homelessness is a function of mental illness, of substance problems, of people’s contrary choices as much as it is of lack of services.”

It would seem to me that the issue of homelessness is going to be effectively under-managed by both sides of politics for one reason, and one reason alone – neither of them actually understands what the problem is! How insulting of you Mr Abbott to pin the blame for homelessness on everyone BUT the government. No one disputes that there is an element of homelessness that is attributed to those factors, but the plain facts of the matter are that there is a rapidly growing sector of the homeless community who are there for no reason other than the shortage of affordable housing and the Government’s inability to handle public housing effectively.

Perhaps there are elements of homelessness that you cannot control, but Mr Abbott, if you want my vote what are you going to do about the elements that you can control? In all likelihood, absolutely nothing because it’s not a popular issue, you won’t win an election for promising to rid the streets of contrary, drug-addicted nutters.

What you do achieve however, Mr Abbott, by making these statements, is to further fuel the public’s ill-perceptions of what it means to be homeless in Australia in 2010. In the meantime, community housing organisations and welfare groups are left to try to fill the rapidly-increasing gap between private rental and government housing. These people are on the streets, speaking to normal, every-day, non-addicted, sane-minded, caring, thinking, rational, TAX-PAYING Australians and picking up the pieces for families, such as mine, who are being left out in the cold by the Government’s inability to even comprehend the problem.

I have lost many friends, acquaintances and supporters by hanging out my family’s homelessness on the public clothes line. I am not, and I will not, be ashamed of the fact that my family has been homeless. I will not refrain from mentioning our circumstances to people that I meet in an attempt to save them from the discomfort of having to summarily judge me based on that information.

I have two options – I can shut up, mind my p’s & q’s and hope that if I behave things will all go back to normal and maybe one day all those friends who seem to have lost my email address will contact me again. Or I can make my bout of homelessness mean something by having the audacity to stand up in modern Australia and say “wake up”. This is not “my problem” or “their problem” this is Australia’s problem and if I can make just one person understand this could happen to anyone – then what we’ve been through is not in vain.

Mr Rudd, if you seriously want to fix homelessness, maybe your first port of call might be to actually answer a homeless person when they speak to you.

As a very proud and patriotic Australian, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy, safe and sheltered Australia Day. I am, you are, we are Australian.