The negative attitude toward those on benefits, persistently propagated by the media, works as a smokescreen to conceal the fact that welfare payments are simply too low.

Until last Friday, around twenty homeless people had set up camp in Melbourne’s City Square, creating shelter where it elsewhere eluded them, as a public petition for more secure, affordable housing in Australia’s second most populous city. The presence of the camp was also a visceral risposte to claims, which appeared in the mainstream media last week, that homeless people had been behaving unpalatably, including asking passers-by for money in an aggressive fashion.

When I first entered the dark satanic mills of parenthood, I spent a good deal of time stomping around shouting, ‘This job should be unionised!’ The hours are terrible, the demands unreasonable, there are numerous occupational health and safety breaches, you are always ‘on call’ and its really hard to understand what your boss wants. The pay is horrific too.

The definition of homelessness itself is more complex than most of us would realise. This point was passionately articulated to an audience attending a forum on homelessness at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne in early 2013, when a former homeless man who advocates for people in the predicament he endured for many years explained the difference between being provided with shelter rather than a home: ‘I want to close my own door of a night. The door to my home, not someone else’s.’

We almost made it to the Rwandan border by crossing Tanzania overland. We caught three ferries, five inter-town dalla dallas, eleven buses, a taxi and a pick-up. We tried to catch a fourth ferry and some trains but services were suspended. We travelled on the worst roads I have ever come across. I lost count […]

Many years ago, I worked as a community worker in a drop-in centre. One day, a wonderful young man – who struggled physically and mentally in life – collapsed. A violent incident had shattered his fragile sense of peace and security in the world. Two female colleagues and I went to tell his parents he […]

The UN News Service reported last week that there are more mobile phones in India than there are toilets – 545 million of them, enough for 45% of the population in a country where over half the population can’t afford a loo. It reminded me of a story on Foreign Correspondent I watched back in […]