HOMELESS ISSUES MUCH DEEPER THAN THE HEADLINES SUGGEST

The headline on the front page of The Bulletin (Sat, Oct 16th) screaming “Homeless” was embarrassing. At least to me. A departmental spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy said it was investing billions in social housing.

Well, the budget might include a bit of “social housing” along the way somewhere, but having been a public servant for a number of years as an actuary, nearly 80% of the cash the spokesperson raves about is spent on just maintaining the jobs of everyone who is on the project, plus an obscene list of perks for the boffins allegedly doing the work, and maybe there’s a bit left over to build a few humpies to allow the PR machine to blow smoke up a particular part of the media’s anatomy.

It’ll be another ten years before any of this will even look like producing some results.

Here in Queensland, the state government public housing fiasco sees people waiting up to ten years to find a place to live.

So, I for one, am offended and incensed, that we can import thousands of refugees every year, find immediate accommodation for them, pay them a “special” payment that would make a pensioner’s eyes bug out, provide a social worker to work with them for some six months, and other services to look after them for another year etc, etc.

This is not a political issue. It is a cultural malaise that speaks to who we really are as a people; that we don’t care about our own! As I said, it makes me embarrassed.

Do you know why a public servant never looks out the window in the morning? … because they would have nothing to do in the afternoon.

HOWARD JUNO, Annandale

1097

The Crusader armies arrive in Antioch. The next day they begin a siege that lasts until June 1098.

1587

A Huguenot army under Henry, Duke of Navarre, defeats the Catholic royalist forces of Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, at the battle of Coutras.

1740

Maria Theresa becomes ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia after the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

1880

A bill is passed in the Tasmanian parliament altering the name of Hobart Town to just Hobart.

1897

King Gojong (above) of Korea declares himself emperor of the newly declared Korean Empire. He takes on the name Gwangmu and ends Korea’s status as a tributary state to China.

1935

Mao Zedong and his Communist forces end their Long March at Yan’an, in Shaanxi, northwest China, one year after beginning their epic flight from Chiang Kaishek’s nationalist armies in the southeast.

1960

Penguin Books goes on trial in London, charged with contravening Britain’s Obscene Publications Act by publishing D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

1964

Classic Australian television police drama, Homicide, makes its debut. It will run until 1977.

1989

Twenty-one people are killed in a collision between a Brisbane-bound coach and semi-trailer near Grafton.

2014

DominicanAmerican fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, couturier to stars, socialites and first ladies for more than four decades, dies at the age of 82.

2015

Nearly 400 people, mostly elderly South Koreans, are reunited with family members in North Korea in an emotional meeting more than 60 years after they were separated by the Korean War.