Burning Words

It never bloody ends.

I’ve had nothing but trouble from Centrelink for this entire year.

It begun when I attempted to get back onto student benefits after my full-time job wound up at the end of last year, after I’d gone part-time for six months. I was told I couldn’t claim them, despite being an enrolled student, until classes actually started, and was expected to go onto the dole and apply for full-time work that I had absolutely no hope of getting, since I couldn’t actually work those hours.

I could finally put in the claim in February, and was told that it would take three weeks to process. This was despite the fact that a) they already had every single detail on file from my having been on that benefit since I was fifteen, and b) that they were able to transfer me across to the dole instantly when I was going the other way. Three weeks passed, and no claim processed. I was told it would be processed sometime, but they couldn’t tell me when. It took a call to my local MP’s office to get it processed - only that wasn’t the end.

They then decided that, despite the fact that I’d been independent of my parents and living on my own in another state for three years, that they’d need all their financial details. By this time it was Easter. They went in to the office back home straight away, and filled all the necessary paperwork. Centrelink then lost it for another few weeks, as it went on a road trip around the country, while I was stuck on the dole and having to report fortnightly. During this period, they tried to send me to three weeks of “this is how you write a resume, you idiot” classes because I’d been on the dole for three months, despite the fact that I’d been studying full-time and working near full-time for pretty much taht entire period, though I did proceed to tell them to go and get fucked on that one. Finally, after sitting on some person’s desk in Canberra for another couple of weeks, what should have been a simple open-and-shut claim got processed right at the end of April.

They then stuffed up when I went to start reporting income for student benefits at the beginning of May, when the staff member wasn’t paying attention and managed to miss the fact that I’d changed jobs, recording the income as coming from a job I’d left at the end of March. This then caused drama when someone actually noticed it a few weeks later, and I got a nasty letter demanding all my payslips from the entire time I’d worked at the prior job, all of which I no longer had. After more drama, they decided that they’d chase them up from said employer (good luck with that, ha) and to stop threatening to cut off my benefits.

And now, today, I discover that my health care card has been cut off for no reason. Apparently, when they finally did decide to reassign me to the proper benefit, they automatically cut off one’s Health Care Card until you’ve been on the new payment for eight weeks, or you file a claim with eight weeks of employment history. I discovered this when I went to pay for my hormone description, which I really kinda need, and discovered that my card had been cancelled. I ring up, and I’m told “okay, you can fill out a claim, which might be done in three weeks, or you can wait three weeks until the eight weeks is up and we’ll assess it then”.

What sort of deranged bloody idiot designs a system that is a) this incompetent, and b) this inflexible, so that it can’t be fixed when it’s either urgent or they’ve fucked up to begin with? They’ve been driving me around the bend for the entire bloody year. And surprise of surprises, no money to fix it in last week’s federal budget. This is why I will never vote for this government.

Tags: centrelink, incompetent bloody idiots, kevin rudd