Given this particular comic warrants further explanation, as well as heralds the end of my first week of daily comics, I am going to make each Friday entry a comic-slash-blog.
Why did I type the word "slash"?
Why didn't I just use the goddamn "slash" symbol?
We may never know.
Let me begin with Centerlink, a term many of you are probably not familiar with, and believe me, that's probably for the best. Centerlink is a service which provides Australian citizens with a sort of social security. I never used to have to deal with Centerlink because I was a full time student living at home with a part time job, so I didn't qualify for any benefits.
That was until I had to quit aforementioned job to be able to complete my final teaching internship. 10 weeks without income could have been a lot worse if I hadn't been prepared for the expenses that came along with it, mostly for fuel and teaching materials. I also had my parents to fall back on in the worst case scenario, so I was fortunate compared to the many single parents in my course who had to work nightshifts after school just to keep food on the table.
Now my internship is over and I'm waiting for my final academic transcript to be released so I can find a job, I am eligible for unemployment benefits. I visited a Centerlink office on Monday to get an idea of what sort of benefits I was eligible for, and as a first time visitor, it was pretty daunting.
You hear a lot of shit about Centerlink, so that doesn't help. I had this impression it would be full of bitter, unhelpful staff and equally bitter, unhelpful people, slowly shuffling along in a endless conveyor belt of borderline poverty. Living south of the river, you are surrounded by poverty, yet it is like a discrete form of poverty - you don't see it unless you are looking for it.
When you go to Centerlink, poverty is staring you in the face. The lines aren't as long as I thought and the staff are reasonably helpful, but the poverty is what makes it so depressing. There was an atmosphere of quiet desperation that made me very uncomfortable. I'm not rich by any means, and I still felt out of place. I must have had a few people looking me up and down, wondering what this girl in reasonably smart clothes reading a book was doing in a Centerlink waiting area.
So I answered all the questions, completed all the relevant forms and went home. I still had no idea how much I was going to get or when I was going to get it. I received a letter from Centerlink a few days later which, in short, approved my application. I was going to get $460 a fortnight.
I was genuinely surprised. Not just at how much Centerlink was prepared to give me, but at how easy it had been to get this far. I don't feel like I deserve that much money for nothing. Usually, you have to prove you are actively seeking work to receive the full amount, but because I am not legally allowed to teach until my WACOT registration comes through, pending the release of my final academic transcript, I don't have to do anything. I just have to sit at home, eating corn chips and browsing Facebook and $460 will magically appear in my bank account each fortnight.
That said, both my brother and my boyfriend are in apprenticeships. They work five days a week, sometimes overtime, for very little. My boyfriend, for example, works up to 60 hours a week as an apprentice, yet he receives no overtime for the extra hours he works. He gets four weeks of holidays each year - two for Easter and two for Christmas. My brother is in a similar situation but works fewer hours. For them to earn roughly the same amount of money per week as I will receive on unemployment benefits is an insult.
It disappoints me that this is how apprentices are treated - as technically unemployed. They work the same amount of hours and do the same amount of work as those who are fully trained in the industry and yet aren't entitled to an income respective of what they do.
Because this webcomic isn't just a webcomic, it's about workers' rights, y'all.
