Tag Archives: Basics Card

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

Gillard/Swan Budget Punishes the Poor, Seeks to Undermine Workers Conditions. Unite the Working Class and Poor to Smash Capitalist Austerity Attacks!

Basics Card pic
The hated Basics Card. As a result of the racist Northern Territory intervention, 50% of the income of an Aboriginal person receiving welfare payments is quarantined so that it can only be accessed with the Basics Card and cannot be used for purchasing “non-essential” items. The federal ALP government has extended this “welfare quarantining” scheme to other parts of the country including to non-Aboriginal communities like Sydney’s Bankstown. Now, the latest federal budget introduces additional humiliations against the poor.

September 30 – She was almost in tears. She was being tormented. It started from around the time of the start of the financial year. Government agencies started calling her up … and calling her up. They were intimidating. They demanded she go through further medical checks to prove that she really was too ill to work. Her illness was bad enough. Now she was being punished for it. Rude bureaucrats would call at strange hours – to check that she was really at home … and presumably not playing sports like a fit person? It was “like the Gestapo” she said. Continue reading Gillard/Swan Budget Punishes the Poor, Seeks to Undermine Workers Conditions. Unite the Working Class and Poor to Smash Capitalist Austerity Attacks! →