During the lead story on tonight's 7.30 Report about the extensive recent storm damage in south-east Queensland and the high likelihood of more, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer both took advantage of the mics under their noses to say the word 'families' as often as possible, as in 'providing help for families'.
Any visitor to these shores idly watching the teeve in his or her hotel room could be excused for thinking that the single and the childless were expected to sod off and fix their own roofs, re-wire their own houses and clean up all the tree branches and sinister floating typhoid-harbouring garbage themselves. The homeless, of course, are not burdened with roofs and therefore require no attention either.
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6 comments:
Visions of homeless people drifting helplessly past on piles of twigs while the PM nails down planks on damaged roofs, to the cheers of adorable ragamuffins wearing calico frocks and frilly pinafores. Although it might be Charles Ingalls I'm thinking off.
"Families" probably score higher with focus groups than "people" or the "community".
I'm surprised it wasn't just "working families" getting the help.
Who's finding new trees for the poor homeless possums I'd like to know.
As one who is both single and childless but working, the constant rhetoric of the "working family" gives me the pip (to put it mildly).
They didn't think much about where our employment levels are likely to go, either, when they came up with "working families". Being told you're a working family isn't going to soothe your rage when you're an unemployed family filling Centrelink forms.
I get more than a bit annoyed about the 'families' rhetoric. I have a family. It consists of my aging parents and my sister who live in different states. Virtually nothing that's said about the family has the slightest relevance to mine. Most of what's said with the tag of 'families' actually just means 'people'.
What is it nowadays with politicians and reproductively-acquired virtue?
If they were to be consistent - and I have no illusions that this might be remotely likely - our politicians would be exhorting us to emulate the exemplary lifestyles of rabbits, weeds & lice.
TFA
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